THORNBURY Town came close to pulling off a shock result at high-flying Pershore Town, only to come away empty-handed in a 2-1 defeat.

When the two sides met at the Mundy's earlier in the campaign Pershore were handsome winners, but this was a totally different story as Thorns almost did enough for at least a point.

All three goals would come in the first half as Thornbury managed to halve the deficit at the break through Nathan Sage's header after Pershore hit the visitors with a quick one-two.

The first was a corner headed in by Sam Clark from Josh Willis' corner, while the second came minutes later from a free kick as Jack Donnelly headed home from distance off Sean's Cooke's delivery.

The Thornbury response to going two goals behind was a good one and they got an important goal shortly before half-time.

Jim Brock's corner from the left was met by the high-rising Sage, who powered a header in to instantly hit back.

Pershore keeper made an excellent stop to prevent Thornbury from levelling matters in first-half stoppage time, and he was again on hand to save the home side as the game entered injury time at the end of the second-half to twice deny Thornbury.

But despite coming away with nothing, manager Richard Joyce was pleased with how his side performed.

!We gave a much better account of ourselves than we did when we last played Pershore in October," he said.

"Once again, even with two or three important players for us missing, we looked more solid, had some good spells of possession when we had the ball, and should have had more than the one goal, but you have to credit their goalkeeper who made some excellent saves.

"We can be pleased with our efforts against a good team and if we keep performing like that, and as we have been recently, we'll give ourselves a good chance of achieving what we want to achieve this season."