Maldon & Tiptree 3 Bury Town 0

The Jammers moved to within three points of league leaders Bowers & Pitsea with this victory over their play-off chasing opponents, Bury Town, writes Dave Meeson.

Wayne Brown’s men took hold of the game after an even opening half hour with the marauding runs of former Fulham and Colchester United man Matthew Briggs and the passing of young midfielder Sammie McLeod taking the eye.

Bury themselves played some excellent football in the early stages and will feel with some justification that Maldon & Tiptree’s opening goal should not have stood as their midfielder Ryan Horne was fouled in the build-up.

The visitors were the first to show and could have gone ahead early on as Robert Girdlestone’s back pass was intercepted by Cemal Ramadan but he could only shoot weakly at home keeper Ben McNamara.

After a quiet period Maldon & Tiptree began to up the pace and a fine move involving Stephane Ngamvoulou and new signing Liam Hope ended with Briggs being denied by a brave stop from Luis Tibbles.

However, the Bury keeper could do nothing on 35 minutes when Briggs arrived late into the area and finished off a cross from Hope with the visitors waiting for a whistle which never came.

The Jammers pushed for a second after the break and Briggs sent Hope clean through on 58 minutes only for Tibbles to save the day again.

There was no respite for Bury as the hosts went further ahead in their next attack after Ngamvoulou’s effort was deflected into the path of Jorome Slew who made no mistake.

Ollie Hughes worked tirelessly up front for the visitors and he just failed to convert a Jake Chambers-Shaw pull-back in a rare attack.

The hosts then applied more pressure and Ngamvoulou headed a Briggs cross against the post before McLeod had a piledriver tipped over by Tibbles.

Maldon finally made the game safe with eight minutes of normal time remaining when a short corner eventually reached Billy Roast who converted at the back post.

Chambers-Shaw and substitute Emmanuel Machaya had chances for a consolation goal towards the end in front of their freezing band of loyal supporters but it was not to be and the Jammers preserved their clean sheet.