Basingstoke Town 0, Lewes 0

ERNIE Howe was pleased with his side's first clean sheet in over two months but was disappointed not to have beaten second-placed Lewes.

Town's last Conference South shut-out was against Newport County back on December 18.

While Saturday's was the major plus-point for the Town manager, ahead of the Hampshire Cup semi-final first leg against Aldershot last Tuesday night at the Camrose, he felt Town had chances to win.

His team certainly got in behind the Lewes defence on a number of occasions, but either hurried the opportunity, chose the wrong option or didn't deliver a good enough final ball to take advantage.

The Town boss said: "I am happy with the first clean sheet in a long while but I think possibly a little more quality in certain situations and we'd have got all three points.

"I thought we worked quite hard and stopped them playing quite a lot, but we just didn't have that final ball or composure to take the chances that came our way.

"We snatched at chances a bit, which we haven't been doing in recent games."

Neville Roach, Town's form player with five goals in three games, was guilty of that, particularly in the first half, which was subject to a 15-minute delay after an injury to match referee Steve Snartt.

The worst rush-of-blood came on 28 minutes when David Ray's pass dissected the Lewes defence, but Roach, with more time than he realised running diagonally on to the ball, elected to shoot first-time.

The 18-goal striker was off balance as he fired over from 10 yards out.

It added to the tone of a game that had 0-0 stamped all over it from the early exchanges.

Sergio Torres put two shots wide, Jason Bristow similarly headed past the post, while Ray hit a 20-yard dipper that just cleared Daniel John Naisbitt's crossbar.

At the other end, Town had a lucky escape when Craig Dobson hooked a volley against the post after Town failed to deal with Kirk Watts' cross to the back-post that Anthony Stones headed down to Dobson.

Max Ellison-Hustwick caused another scare when his shot from the edge of the box somehow evaded the four men Lewes had over at the far post.

Howe said he felt the whole side had done well, but he did single out for praise defender Mark Paterson, playing his first match for Town this season.

"I thought he did well, considering it was his first game back after his nasty broken wrist, which has kept him out since the summer," said Howe.

"He dealt well with everything that came his way and he's certainly done enough to keep his place for the Aldershot game."