Salisbury have the look of champions

Nick Holmes's men pulled out all the stops to win a titanic top-of-the-table showdown 3-1 at King's Lynn - and silence a season's best 1,821 crowd.

Had the Linnets won, they would have been basking in the glow of top spot this morning.

Instead they trail Salisbury by four points.

Bath City separate the two but, like King's Lynn, they have played one game more than the leaders.

"That wasn't far off our best performance of the season," smiled satisfied assistant boss Barry Blankley. "Nick (Holmes) went home by car with his wife because he wasn't feeling too well, but that result will have been just the tonic he needed!"

Midfielder Wayne Turk was the hero of the hour with two goals - the first arriving after just four minutes.

Linnets' defence could only hack at Simon Browne's testing delivery from the left and Turk was waiting to smack home a shot from 22 yards.

Whites' joy lasted only three minutes, however.

With a gusty wind causing problems, keeper Kevin Sawyer appeared to get too far under Matt Dolan's towering cross while under pressure from Jack Defty and the ball ended up in the back of the net.

Salisbury responded positively with Aaron Cook heading over and Paul Sales firing just wide before they reclaimed the lead on 26 minutes. Luke Prince delivered the corner and fellow new boy Ashan Holgate bravely rose among a cluster of players to make it 2-1.

On 54 minutes Salisbury made the points safe when Cook launched a free-kick from just inside his own half. Turk took the ball down, beat two defenders and fired a sweet left-foot shot across the keeper.

The result ended King's Lynn's nine-match unbeaten run, but Blankley knows the season is far from over.

He said: "There's still a lot of football to play and it looks as if King's Lynn have got the easiest run-in with four of their last five matches at home.

"But we know that if we win all our games we'll get promotion."