ILKLEY Town bounced back from a midweek defeat to beat Hall Green 4-1 on Saturday.

After their midweek 2-0 defeat at Field, Town returned to Ben Rhydding looking to get back to winning ways.

The weather was blustery and both teams struggled in the opening exchanges, both trying to get a foothold in the game.

After 15 minutes, it was Town who started to create chances.

The first goal followed a couple of fine saves by the Hall Green keeper. Alfie Heaton provided a delivery which caused confusion in the Hall Green penalty area. A goalmouth scramble followed before Tom Fleming dispatched the ball into the net to make it 1-0.

Tom Smith began to find spaces with his clever movement. In the space of five minutes, he was denied three times by the Hall Green keeper after some wonderful build up play.

Town’s domination deserved more than a slender one-goal advantage and man-of-the-match Nicc Hewitt duly obliged with a thunderbolt from 25 yards with power and dip which deceived the Hall Green stopper and nestled in the top corner to make it 2-0.

Although Town were looking as though they would go on and win comfortably, they had a loss of concentration and a mistake brought Hall Green back into the game.

With their first real entry into the Town half, Hall Green were allowed into the final third far too easily and a lofted, hopeful ball was misjudged by the Town centre halves and landed at the feet of the Hall Green centre forward who fired into the net to cut the lead to 2-1.

Town switched back on and some neat interplay between Harry Brown, Fleming and Ben Greenhow saw the ball find its way to Smith, who with a feint saw the Hall Green centre half slide right past and take the ball with him via his hand, resulting in a penalty kick. Smith picked himself up and then coolly slotted the ball into the bottom corner to extend the lead to 3-1.

Combination play from substitutes Dave Hancock and Ben Atkinson saw Atkinson released down the left.

He drove inside, took the ball round his opponent and then picked out Brown at the back post. Brown then found Fleming, who rolled the ball into the net to complete his brace.