GARY Funnell's 35-yard free-kick spared Poole Town's blushes as Tom Killick's side scraped past Alresford Town despite a far from vintage performance.

Funnell's long-range strike 12 minutes from full-time proved enough to keep the leaders in charge of the Wessex Premier Division, though the winning strike owed much to the Alresford keeper, who "made a mess" of it, according to Killick.

The Dolphins supremo admitted he was not happy with his side's performance and he felt their lowly opponents were the better side.

"It wasn't very impressive," Killick told the Daily Echo.

"We went 1-0 up just before half-time against the run of play and I thought hopefully we'd go on and that would settle us down a bit.

"But we didn't really improve and they equalised 10 minutes into the second half. We did then probably dominate."

Killick admitted it would have been "very frustrating" to have dropped points on Saturday.

He said: "It's probably the only time this season where I've been really disappointed with the performance.

"We really looked out of sorts but I can't complain too much because it's taken until November to have a really bad performance.

"We've had some indifferent ones but this was the first I was really disappointed with.

"If it happened again next Saturday I'd start to think there was a problem but as long as it gets sorted for next week I'll just put it down to one of those days."

Killick bolstered his squad last week with the addition of striker Ben Osborne And the ex-Christchurch frontman impressed on his debut at Alresford.

"One of the positives to come out of the game was he played 90 minutes, had two or three near misses, and worked really hard," said Killick.

"He showed some good touches and I was really pleased with him.

"Ben and Steve Smith worked really hard and looked quite useful as a pair, so that was encouraging."

Killick is hoping back-to-back wins will give his side some breathing space at the top of the table.

"It's a lot tighter than it was a few weeks ago," he said.

"We've got games now against Downton and Ringwood (the bottom two) and we need six points."

Poole Town: Frampton, Yelland (Skelton 60), I Richardson, Whitley, Funnell, S Richardson, Sturgess, Cann (Bowden 20), Culliford, S Smith, Osborne. Unused subs: Lima, T Smith, C Smith.