Bury 1 Stoke City 0 by Steve Canavan

ANDY Preece celebrated his 34th birthday in style after watching his team record a deserved win over play-off favourites Stoke.

A scrambled second half strike from Chris Swailes was enough to wrap up another three points in front of the second largest crowd of the season and leave Bury in good heart for this weekend's spicy derby hot pot against Oldham Athletic.

"It was a nice birthday present," smiled Preece. "The lads were different class tonight and we thoroughly deserved to win the game.

"Because the league is so close we're always in with a chance of making the play-off's but defeat at Bournemouth on Saturday has probably cost us.

"But we're on 53 points, in a good position and we just want to go on and finish as high as possible."

There were celebrations all round as goalkeeper Paddy Kenny notched up his 100th consecutive appearance and youngster Nicky Hill earned his first sponsors man of the match award for another assured and classy performance.

Dominated

But early on it looked like the visitors and not the Shakers would be the ones celebrating.

Stoke, living up to a record which has seen them defeated only three times away from home all season, dominated the opening half hour.

But in the frantic minutes leading up to the interval Bury hit back and Stoke never recovered.

Daws, Newby and Redmond all came close to scoring and within 60 seconds of the restart Jon Newby latched onto a poor back pass from former England international Tony Dorigo, rounded keeper Gavin Ward but put his shot into the side netting from a narrow angle.

Ten minutes later Cramb should have scored after dispossessing Thomas just outside the area and hitting two lobs, the first parried by Ward, the second headed off the line by full back Mikael Hansson.

The inevitable goal arrived on 62 minutes. Reid's corner was met by Redmond. His header was half blocked by Ward but Swailes was first to react, lashing the ball into the roof of the net.

Frustrated Stoke began to lose their heads and three players went into the referee's notebook in the space of eight minutes.

Throughout the mayhem Bury continued to play sensible soccer, keeping the ball well and Paddy Kenny's goal was never threatened until four minutes from time when he threw himself at Dadason's feet to smother a shot.

While Stoke's angry manager Gudjon Thordarson sent his players back out for a half-hour after match training session, Chris Swailes was basking in the glory of scoring his third goal of the season - not a bad strike rate for the big defender.

However, he revealed that all was not quite as it seemed. "To be honest Kavanagh swung his foot in the box and it went in the net," admitted Swailes. "But I was nearest to it and I don't get many so I'm having it.

"It was hard early on and we had to be solid as in defence but once we got the goal we had the spirit to hang on and with Jon's pace and Cramb's control we could have had a few more."

BURY: Kenny 8, Billy 7, Armstrong 7, C SWAILES 9, Hill 8, Redmond 7, Daws 7, Reid 8, Forrest 7, Cramb 8, Newby 7. Subs: Preece, Littlejohn, Jarrett, Halford, Connell. Att: 4,224