WARRINGTON Town's six-match unbeaten run in the National League North has come to an end.

Mark Beesley's men suffered just their second defeat of the calendar year on Tuesday evening having been well beaten by hosts Spennymoor Town.

Yellows trailed early after Lebrun Mbeka squeezed a header home from a corner, and Moors doubled their lead on the stroke of half time when, having won the ball back on halfway, Reece Staunton drove towards goal and crashed home an excellent finish.

Despite attacking down the Brewery Field slope, Town could not find a meaningful response after the break and the hosts were able to close out a deserved victory.

Read Matt Turner's verdict on the game below

THREE days is clearly a long time in football.

Having put in one of their best performances of the season at Curzon Ashton at the weekend, this was one Warrington Town would rather forget.

Well beaten on the night by opponents who were superior in every aspect, only time will tell as to whether or not this was merely an off-night or the start of something more concerning.

For a team that has become used to performing cohesively and superbly of late, however, it was certainly a bad night at the office.

The game followed a similar pattern to their only previous defeat this calendar year to league leaders Tamworth – they weren’t quite as comprehensively outplayed as they were that night, but they were suffocated by the same kind of relentless press which made it a struggle for them to escape.

In many ways, Spennymoor came up with the perfect gameplan – their high press forced Town long, where Isaac Buckley-Ricketts and Connor Woods had little chance of emerging victorious against giant centre-half Lebrun Mbeka, who used his dominance in the opposition box to head Spennymoor into a lead they wouldn’t surrender from a corner despite the best efforts of Dan Atherton and Andy White to keep the ball out.

With Mbeka sweeping up everything in the air, the next stage was picking up the second balls in midfield, which they did with alarming ease from a Yellows point of view.

As half time approached, the visitors would probably have taken going in just the one goal behind to give them the chance to regroup, but Reece Staunton’s goal on the stroke of the interval was a killer blow.

In many ways, it was a goal symptomatic of how the game went as a whole as the Spennymoor man out-battled his adversary for the ball, drove forward and powered home.

If they were to have any chance of getting back into the game, Town would have to use the considerable Brewery Field slope as efficiently as their hosts had done after the break but if anything, they were fortunate not to concede more goals as they were picked off in their attempts to drive forward.

Barring a flurry of chances around the hour mark – substitute Josh Amis passed up the best of them when electing to try and round keeper Brad James when through one-on-one as opposed to shooting – they could not put together anything sustained.

Amis’ return from an ankle injury was perhaps the biggest positive of a night in which they were scarce, while they will also hope Matty McDonald – a key part of their recent surge – has come through unhindered after a hamstring niggle limited him to a cameo off the bench.

Nothing should take away from the performances Town have had recently and through the season as a whole, but this has to go down as one of the very few sub-standard displays and one they need to shake off quickly.

Warrington Town: Atherton, Walker (McDonald), White, Hannigan, Woods, Williams, Pasiek (Amis), Buckley-Ricketts, Wisdom, Grivosti (Gill), Clarke. Subs not used: Gumbs, Harris