Aylesbury 8 St Ives Town 1

For the second season in a row St Ives went to Aylesbury and failed to perform. This was a truly abysmal display as the visitors completely capitulated in the second half to go down to their worst defeat in living memory.

The early stages of the game gave little indication of what was to follow as the Ives had their fair share of possession and only good covering tackles by the home defenders prevented Salim Relizani, Jack Higgs and Jon Stead getting shots away in the first 15 minutes.

A needless foul by Ollie Medwynter on Brian Haule 30 yards from goal led to the Moles taking the lead on 17 minutes.

Aston Goss swung in the free kick and Haule was able to rise unchal-lenged ten yards to head home.

On 31 minutes the Moles went 2-0 ahead and at half-time some visiting supporters dared to dream.

Yet two goals in two minutes settled the issue. Bradley Wadkins on 51 minutes extended their lead.

Two minutes later a throughball from Gareth Price played in Sonny French and Lynton Goss, following up, rolled the ball into an empty net.

St Ives netted an unexpected consolation on 56 minutes as Jordan Lambert found himself completely unmarked at the far post as a Higgs corner found its way to him and he kept his cool to side-foot home his first goal for the club after more than 150 games.

Only five minutes later the home side scored again. Aston Goss was given time and space to turn and run at the visitors defence, he fed the ball in to Lynton Goss, whose first-time shot was parried into the air by Barney McLaughlin, but Price was following up to head home his second.

On 66 minutes the rampant Moles went 6-1 in front as French and Wadkins combined to pass their way through the static visi-tor’s defence with the latter being allowed a free run into the box to fire the ball past the despairing McLaughlin into the far corner.

French scored on 81 minutes and to add insult to injury for Ives the frustration began to show and substitute Stuart Eason managed to pick up two needless yellow cards in seven minutes to take them down to 10 men.

The final embarrassment came in injury time as Aston Goss went round Lambert and laid the ball into Wadkins who completed his hat-trick from close range to complete the rout and take the Moles up to second.

The Ives have two winnable games coming up at home to Chalfont St Peter on Saturday and Bedworth on Tuesday.