Porthleven were handed a boost in their South West Peninsula League Division 1 West title challenge on Saturday.

The Fishermen returned to the top of the table after previous league leaders and title favourites Liskeard Athletic lost 2-1 at Mousehole – their first defeat of the league season.

Port beat Bere Alston United 4-0 to assume top spot but Liskeard still have the upper hand, being just two points behind with two games in hand and a superior goal difference.

Manager Alan Carey said: “We can’t do anything about Liskeard so there’s no point in even thinking about them, as far as we’re concerned we’ve just got to concentrate on what we’re doing.

“I think there’ll be more points dropped yet in this league and I’m not taking Mousehole out of this yet because I think they’re still very much in this race, so I think it’s going to go right down to the end.”

Port took full advantage of their rivals’ slip-up by running out 4-0 winners at Bere Alston United, with Matt Drummond scoring a hat-trick to take his tally for the season to 20.

“For us just to get a result after the run that we’ve had was a big thing really, just to get us back and to get the boys playing with a smile on their face again which they did so I’m quite pleased with the result,” Carey said.

“We’ve just got to get ourselves back enjoying playing football again and we did that yesterday [Saturday], a lot of players, good banter going around and playing with smiles on their faces which is what we need at the end of the day. It was important to pick up three points and a clean sheet was nice.”