HOME discomfort continued for Tempest United, as they lost 4-2 on their own turf to Crooklands Casuals.

Tempest put two second-half chances on a platter and the visitors, second-bottom in the table, made the most of them on a bad day all round for the highest-placed local team in the Premier Division.

They have won 10 of their 15 away games in the league but just three from 11 at Tempest Road, something that has hindered their progress throughout the campaign.

Despite occupying sixth spot, boss Ross McNair and assistant Gary Westhead had to spell out a few home truths to their players.

“It was a really poor performance from us,” said Westhead. “We gifted them two goals, something we haven’t been doing this season but we kept giving their main striker, Dave Mansergh, chance after chance – we just didn’t do our jobs.

“He scored a great opening goal but the second came from a set-piece. We switched to 4-4-2, started to create chances and Nathan Monson pulled one back. Then we gave them a dolly, our keeper Nathan Pennington miskicked a clearance from a back-pass, it went straight to their forward and he made it 3-1.

“We did the hard work in pulling back to 3-2 with Kurtis Farren’s goal then the same thing happened again and Mansergh made it 4-2.

“It is difficult to put all the blame on Nathan and we won’t do, he has had a terrific season for us, he just had a mad 10 minutes.”

Tempest are still on course for a successful end to the season, and Westhead says overtaking Euxton Villa and Garstang is still a reasonable target.

“If we can catch those in fourth and fifth we’ll be happy,” he said. “Perhaps if we played away every week we’d be doing better, but we have had five cup games at home that we’ve won, so it’s difficult for us to put our fingers on it.

“We had been aiming for the top three but dropped points in games we would have expected to collect against teams down at the bottom.

“It has still been a great season, if we can finish in the top six as well as runs to the semi-finals in the Lancashire Amateur Shield and League Cups we’ll be happy.”

Eagley took just a point from two Easter fixtures, drawing 1-1 with Vickerstown on Saturday but losing 2-1 at home to Garstang yesterday.

In Division One CMB lost 2-1 at Poulton while Stoneclough drew 2-2 at home to Lytham Town.

In the Manchester League Division One Matt Jackson’s brace gave Atherton Town a 2-0 win at Breightmet United.

Bolton County’s Tom Helsby was also in double-scoring mode, and with Liam Short and Liam Stewart also netting, they were 4-0 winners at Chapel Town.