Poole Town made it five wins out of five for December as they secured victory at Romsey Town to ensure they are top on Christmas Day for the second season running.

Romsey is never an easy place to go. The pitch is small, bumpy with plenty of slopes. Indeed, everything you need to make playing football as difficult as possible. Add to that a home team who were extremely fired up to cause an upset and it was always going to be a difficult day for the Dolphins. The only change to the starting eleven from Tuesday's win at VT was Mickey Hubbard starting with Aaron Skelton back on the bench.

Poole got off to a shaky start and a mistake from Taffy Richardson on just five minutes allowed Cole to run clear and he beat Harvell with a low shot to put the home side into an early lead. Poole at last began to play a bit of football and after some good pressure on 13 minutes a shot from Bailey-Pearce was parried by the keeper. A minute later and Lamin Dibba advanced from deep to fire a hard shot just wide of the post. Charlie Austin soon got in on the action just moments later when he raced forward but also fired wide of the post. The goal was coming............

The equaliser came on 19 minutes - Kevin Gill doing well and finding Steve Smith who took a touch and then hooked the ball past the keeper into the left corner - a fine strike. At this stage it was all Poole and a comfortable victory looked on the cards. Again Austin popped up with another shot which the keeper saved well.

On the half hour Poole took the expected lead. Bailey-Pearce found Dave Sturgess and from the penalty spot he fired in a shot which the keeper got a hand to but could not stop it from finding the corner of the net. Job done? Not by a long way! Romsey hit back well and on 38 minutes a ball into the box was partially headed away and Long managed a volley from an acute angle which eluded everyone and found the bottom right corner of the Poole goal. As the half came to an end Poole found themselves back at 2-2 and some strong words were required for a better second half performance.

Half time: 2-2.

Despite playing well Steve Smith was replaced by Stuart Brown on 56 minutes as Killick looked to ring the changes in an effort to galvanise a plodding Poole performance. The nature of the game and pitch meant that both sides resorted to many long balls hoofed into the box from all over the pitch. It wasn't pretty and simply made for a very scrappy game.

On 57 minutes Austin flicked on a header superbly for Brown but his header at goal bounced wide of the post. More changes ensued as Bailey-Pearce and Hubbard were replaced by (back from suspension) Mike Walker and Aaron Skelton respectively.

The Romsey number 8, Kemp received a second yellow card on 70 minutes which saw him receive his marching orders. Whilst that particular challenge was pretty tame he had already been fortunate on a number of previous occasions and it always looked like he would get sent off. This was probably the difference in the end as within five minutes Poole secured their third, and ultimately winning, goal. Another long ball into the box was met by Stuart Brown's head and although only a flick on the ball squirmed away from everyone including the keeper and rolled across the line.

It was now a case of seeing out the game and even then the Poole defence creaked at times as De'Ath in particular went close for Romsey. The biggest blow for Poole came in injury time when Charlie Austin received a straight red card for an arm in the face when jumping for the ball. With Austin already suspended for the next match at Hamworthy we now await to see what other games the young hotshot will miss.

A pretty dire game devoid of much entertainment. However, even with a relatively poor display the Dolphins have once again secured another three points and have now dropped just two points in the entire first half of the season.