THEY may need favours from elsewhere but after returning to top spot Ladybridge have not given up on scooping the Division Two title.

Ladybridge came from a goal down to win their derby at Tempest United’s reserve team, courtesy of Stuart Schofield and Mark Truffas’ second-half strikes.

Although they are in pole position, Dean Walmsley’s side have to hope their championship rivals slip up on more than one occasion, as they have played four more games than previous leaders Leyland United, while third-placed Millom have a further four fixtures yet to be fulfilled.

But, while they head the standings, Walmsley maintains hope they can return to Division One at the first time of asking.

“It’s good for us to go back to the top,” said the manager.

“And we did well to come from a goal down, I think Tempest might have lost a few of their players to the first team but they were still decent, though they didn’t create that much, our keeper didn’t have a lot to do. We struggled in the first half but switched things around a bit at half time and were much better.”

Schofield levelled matters when Tempest failed to clear Alexandru Cosmin’s free kick into the area, pouncing to find the net via a handy deflection.

And just before the hour the ever-lethal Truffas made the most of an error in the Tempest defence to wrong-foot the keeper and give his side their 18th league win of the season.

Whether it proves to be enough to pave their way back to Division One remains to be seen, but Walmsley has been pleased with the players’ efforts and feels there is still some life in the title race yet.

“We deserved that win, everyone battled for each other and put a real shift in, I was proud of them,” he told The Bolton News.

“We were unlucky not to score more goals in the second half because we hit the post twice and had a few more chances we could have made more of.

“But when we went 2-1 up we managed the game well. We went to try to get a third goal but that didn’t come so we shut up shop and managed to see it out.

“It was a good theree points and took us back to the top. We’ve got three games left in the league so we’ll just try to finish the season as strongly as we can and see what happens.

“The other teams have got a backlog and it won’t be that easy for them playing so many games, it’s hard to perform week in, week out – no one would have expected Leyland would lose to Dalton on Saturday so we’ll just see what we can do and hope we can get a few favours from other teams.”

In the Premier Division, Pete Lancaster’s hat-trick was enough for Tempest United’s first team to bring three points home from Slyne With Hest after a 3-0 win.

Turton failed to take a succession of chances at home to Vickerstown before conceding the only goal of the game with 17 minutes left.

There were wins in Division One for CMB, 2-0 victors at Mill Hill St Peters thanks to goals from Ash Farlow and Matty Chapman, and Stoneclough, who beat visitors Kendal County 3-0 with Joe McCann hitting two after Stuart Parkinson had scored the opening goal.

Eagley went down 3-1 in their match at Hawcoat Park.

The Eagles had been 2-0 down with 10 minutes left when Simon Neary gave them hope.

But as they pushed for an equaliser they conceded a third goal on 85 minutes.