PENISTONE Church reached the halfway point in their NCEL Premier Division season with a 3-0 win at home to Bottesford Town on Saturday.

They have 34 points from 19 games and are third, five points off the only automatic promotion place and six clear in the play-off spots.

They have played several games more than most of the teams around them.

Against Bottesford, Luca DeFalco got an early opener then Nathan Keightley doubled the lead on the stroke of half-time. Leon Hurles-Brook added a third after the break.

Ryan Johnson played his 300th game for the club.

Coach Brett Lovell said: “We’ve worked hard for that win. It was a really positive performance, we kept going forward but we also were defensively sound and Adam Lawlor when called upon in the last five minutes made an excellent save to preserve our clean sheet which is really important to us. I think we were the better side for 90 minutes. Sam Scrivens has been phenomenal, we’ve asked him to do two or three jobs and he’s really put a shift in

“It was excellent for us to get that result for Ryan Johnson, he’s been an absolute stalwart at this club. He deserved his ovation when we took him off because 300 games at any club is special but at our club even more so.”