THE Clarets grabbed their first win of the season at the seventh attempt with a deserved 1-0 victory at Sticker.

Launceston had lost their last three games, which included a 5-0 defeat at Falmouth Town Reserves a week earlier, but were much-improved at Burngullow Park.

Delighted joint boss Simon Minett told the Post: “At training on Wednesday we talked about our shape and our structure and when we were going to engage the opposition and how we were going to make ourselves hard to beat, because we’ve been conceding too many goals, but we performed really well and set out what we wanted to do.”

Launceston gave a first start to striker Ethan Gwillam and the visitors felt they should have been up against 10 men midway through the half when home keeper Harry Ashton clattered into Gwillam, but the referee awarded just a yellow.

James McNary then missed a one-on-one before as the Clarets went into the break all square.

Sticker were improved after the restart with both sides having chances, but the game was won when sub Tom Bullock chased down a lost cause to win the ball off Ashton before making no mistake.

A delighted Minett continued: “Overall we felt like we deserved to win. Don’t get me wrong, Sticker had a few opportunities themselves, but I think it’d have been unjust if we didn’t.”

He continued: “Everybody did well, they took on board what was said in training.

“Ethan Gwillam was fantastic up front and shared the joint man-of-the-match award with Sam Tattersall at right-back, who played some excellent balls into the midfield.

“Lots of players gave seven or eight out of 10 performances and when you do that, you won’t be far away.

“Hopefully we can take that performance into the Vase at Bishops Lydeard on Saturday.”