LOWESTOFT Town joint boss Ady Gallagher was delighted the decision to switch hat-trick hero Joe Francis to centre-forward paid dividends in the thrilling win over East Thurrock United on Saturday.

LOWESTOFT Town joint boss Ady Gallagher was delighted the decision to switch hat-trick hero Joe Francis to centre-forward paid dividends in the thrilling win over East Thurrock United on Saturday.

The Blues were trailing 2-1 to the Rocks at half-time when the management trio of Gallagher, Micky Chapman and Craig Fleming decided to put Francis up top.

And the move paid off straight away as Francis bagged a brace to give his side the lead, and although the visitors pulled it back to 3-3, the former King's Lynn man was on hand to complete his hat-trick for victory.

"We felt that Joe's pace and directness would cause them a bit of a problem and it's just one of those things that when they come off for you it's fantastic," Gallagher said of the win which keeps the Blues six points clear at the top of Ryman League Division One North.

"It was inspired in many ways and worked well for us on this occasion. And when you've got good players you know that someone's always likely to create and, to be fair, if we'd taken our chances earlier and their goalkeeper hadn't been having such a great game we could have been comfortably in the lead in the first 20 minutes. But it turned into a bit of a scrap."

And Gallagher admitted the points were crucial in the grand scheme of things as his side push on towards promotion.

"Three points against one of the tops sides in the league is important at this stage of the season and we've got 16 games left," he said.

"We've got a nice lead at the top but you have to keep chipping away at games.

"We've now played Thurrock twice, we've played Thamesmead twice, we've got Enfield and Concord who are the other two main rivals over the next week to ten days, so we know after those games we've played all the top five teams twice.

"It's a nice position to be in at this stage of the season, but we've earned that by being really consistent throughout the start of the season right through to Christmas.

"I think our form since Christmas has not been fantastic and is probably not as relaxed and as free-flowing as it has been but, to be fair, we've had so many injuries and disruptions to the line-up it's inevitable it's going to unsettle things.”