A STIRRING second-half fightback counted for nothing as Worcester City slumped to their first home defeat of the season against Midland League Premier Division title rivals Sporting Khalsa.

A sloppy first-half performance saw the hosts go in at the break three goals adrift and their plight worsened when the rampant visitors added a fourth 10 minutes after the break.

Goals from Dave Reynolds, Alex Tomkinson and Jamie Smith closed the gap to 4-3 but more slapdash defending allowed Khalsa’s debutant striker Jack Jeys to tuck away his fourth of the game to wrap up the points.

“You can’t come in at 3-0 down at half-time if you are going to go on and win the league,” admitted joint-boss John Snape.

“Disappointing defending, particularly for the first goal, epitomised our first-half performance.

“You can’t blame the pitch but I think they played it better than us.

"We wanted too many touches in bad areas and probably didn’t get it forward quick enough.

"We probably caused our own problems, particularly in the first half.

"We huffed and puffed and never really got a grip on the game.

"I’ll be honest and I thought they wanted it more than us at times and we looked a bit tired.”

City made three changes from the side that beat Westfields 4-2 in midweek with Nathan Vaughan replacing Matt Gwynne in goal and Alex Tomkinson and Mark Danks coming in for Matt Birley and Lee Hughes.

A slight groin strain ruled out Wednesday’s two-goal match-winner Hughes.

But City were second best in the opening period as livewire Jeys struck twice with visiting skipper Tesfa Robinson also on the scoresheet, the opening two goals coming from poorly-defended corners.

Jeys scored on the break to make it 4-0 before City finally started to pose a threat, clawing their way back into contention with three goals in 17 minutes after a half-time change of personnel and formation.

But all that good work was undone when Jeys and Khalsa wrapped up the win 12 minutes from the end.

Snape added: “We started well in the second half and had 10 minutes where we put them under pressure.

"The fourth goal was a sucker punch. It’s come from our corner and we’ve been done on the halfway line by making a wrong decision. On another day the lad would have been stopped.

“We get ourselves back in the game and I think at 4-3 everyone is thinking the game can go either way.

"But we’ve then overplayed in the middle of the park to concede our fifth goal and I never thought we’d see this side concede five goals with the knowhow, knowledge and experience we’ve got.

"That goal took the wind out of the sails. They have taken their chances and managed the game better than we did.

“The positive is that we’ve scored three goals but the negative is that it’s our first home defeat in the league and it will be our last.

"It was hopefully an off-day but we’ll be working hard in training to make sure that it was just that – an off-day.”

City: Vaughan, Weir, J Smith, Stoddart, Thomas (M Smith 46), Hayward, Danks (Baldwin 46), Birch, Reynolds, Forsyth, Tomkinson (Moran 80). Subs not used: Birley, Gwynne.

Attendance: 375.