THEY made a meal of seeing off Division Two’s basement side but Horwich St Mary’s Victoria just about stayed on course for the title.

Horwich were 2-0 down inside the first 20 minutes at home to Longridge Town’s reserves but upped their game to eventually net a winner two minutes into stoppage time.

And, having taken the victory while being at far from their best, club chairman Danny Holmes feels that can only be a good sign for their promotion hopes.

“We made very hard work of it on Saturday,” said the former manager, who is now overseeing all aspects of business at Scholes Bank.

“It was unlucky from Longridge’s point of view, they seem to be more of a junior team to back up the firsts who have just gone into the North West Counties, and they more than gave us a game.

“We started off with a mistake at the back, we gave the ball away at the back and that led to our goalkeeper, Charlie Whittingham, giving away a penalty, which they put away.

“Then, a few minutes later, Alex Abbott headed straight to their striker and he scored to make it 2-0, we’d not started at all. It was a kick up the backside for us, and we did get something going from that point, we got a penalty after about half an hour.

“Matty Woods was brought down and he took the penalty himself and scored it. Then we had a couple of half-decent chances so we could have gone in at half time 2-2 without really getting going.

“Matty equalised early in the second half with a good goal from the edge of their box and from there it was pretty much one-way traffic.

“We had another penalty with 20 minutes to go after Liam Foster had been pulled back and Matty took it but their keeper made a good save.

“He’s our in-form striker, he was on a hat-trick and nine times out of 10 he would have put it away but didn’t and we were thinking it just wasn’t going to be our day.”

Horwich were denied a third penalty – and the fourth of the game – when Matt Hancock was felled in the box, a foul Holmes said was the clearest penalty shout of all.

And with a series of chances going begging it seemed they would miss the chance to put daylight between themselves and Croston Sports in second.

However, after the 90 minutes had expired, Foster pounced in a goalmouth scramble to knock in the goal that extended their winning streak to six games.

Horwich are now five points clear at the top, and 16 ahead of fourth-placed Walney Island, their final opponents of the year.

In their first season since joining from the Lancashire Amateur League, promotion was the initial aim for Victoria.

That ambition has had to be amended slightly, given the recent run that saw new joint managers Matt Unsworth and Danny Mills win the league’s manager-of-the-month award for November, a month that saw Horwich hit 12 goals in their three league games – all victories – and Woods start a purple patch of eight goals in four games.

“We’re in really good form, we last dropped league points in a draw with Kendal in mid-October and that’s six wins in a row now,” added Holmes.

“We’ve got Walney coming on Saturday, it’s a long trip for them and it’ll be a pain for them.

“I just hope we’ll get the game on, which I think we’ll be able to, because I doubt they’d fancy it and we’re up for the game.

“We had to grind it out on Saturday, that’s just what you need to do sometimes, whether you’re playing a team at the top or the bottom you have to put the work in to get results.

“Promotion was the ultimate aim in the summer but there are only six league games left for us to play, we’ve got ourselves into a great position to win the title and it’s ours to throw away now.

“If we don’t win the title it’s down to us, things are stacked in our favour – we’ve got two of the Barrow teams having to come to us, which they won’t like, we have to play Mill Hill who are third-bottom and Longridge again and they’ve only got two points all season.

“The target was promotion to Division One but we really want the title now.”

CMB extended their lead at the top of Division One with a 3-2 win at Crooklands Casuals.

Rob Pennington’s side did it the hard way, though, fighting back from 2-0 down.

Crooklands struck twice in quick succession at the start of the second half but Dan Crook and Tom Healey got the Chew Moor team back on level terms.

Lewis Cullen then scored the winning goal two minutes from time to snatch three points that keep CMB ahead of the pack, now four points clear of nearest challengers Leyland United, who were not in action.

CMB travel to second-bottom Askam United on Saturday.

Tempest United brought home a point from their Premier Division match at Hurst Green, with Tom Booth and Luke Skelly scoring in a 2-2 draw.

Breightmet United hosted Astley and Tyldesley in the Manchester League Division Two but failed to get their first point on the board as the visitors ran out 4-0 winners.

There were also fruitless afternoons for two Lancashire Amateur League sides seeing action, Thornleigh and Blackrod Town.

Thornleigh were beaten 3-0 at Premier Division champions Mostonians while Blackrod were knocked out of the Lancashire FA Amateur Cup.

They lost 5-4 on penalties after a 2-2 draw at Old Mancunians.