Gorleston 6, Bury II 1AT last able to bring together their full hockey squad, except for Jamie Higginbotham, Gorleston have hopefully turned the corner in the EML Division Three North-East this season with Saturday's convincing victory at Cliff Park.

Gorleston 6, Bury II 1

AT last able to bring together their full hockey squad, except for Jamie Higginbotham, Gorleston have hopefully turned the corner in the EML Division Three North-East this season with Saturday's convincing victory at Cliff Park.

Facing a young but skilful development team, Gorleston used their superior speed and physical presence to establish an early command. And with Jamie Clarkson and Russ Crawford on song in attack it took only five minutes for Crawford to break into Bury's D and beat their keeper comprehensively.

In the midfield Andrew Lilly, Martyn Vaudin and man-of-the-match Richard Pallant were completely dominant. And with skipper Kevin MacDonald, Mark Vaudin and Johnny Mobbs mopping up any danger behind them, keeper Barney King never touched the ball in the first half.

The result was one-way traffic towards the Bury goal and after several close calls Crawford after 22 minutes doubled the lead with another slick opportunist effort.

Minutes later Adam Stone sealed victory with another fine cut across the D finished off with a blistering reverse-stick shot.

From the start of the second half the Bury defence went to sleep following a quickly-taken free-hit and conceded another short corner. Although visiting keeper Andy Longfield had a splendid game and saved several other Jamie Clarkson bullets, he was powerless to prevent Stone from notching his second and Gorleston's fourth.

Straight from the restart Bury finally made inroads into the home side's D and Will Crystal took advantage of a snapshot through Andrew Lilly's legs to beat an unsighted Barney King.

Gorleston continued to control the game and five minutes later Stone and Martyn Vaudin combined well for Vaudin to restore the four-goal advantage.

As the game drew to a close Gorleston had one final card to play as Russ Crawford again nipped ahead of his marker and slotted the ball home to complete a well-deserved hat-trick.

This win sees Gorleston climb the league table to eighth position and next game they travel to Harleston to take on the Magpies' fourth team with a push-back at 2.15pm. Transport leaves the Albion at 12.30 pm.