ATHERTON LR rose to sixth in the Unibond First Division last night following a superb 3-2 victory at Curzon Ashton.

Curzon had been the form club of recent weeks but it counted for little as Rovers took a two-goal lead in the first half.

Tony Pemberton finished off a tremendous passing move on 20 minutes and ten minutes later Lee Cryer scored with a far post header from Joey Dunn's corner.

Malcolm O'Connor got one back for the home side just after the interval and LR faced a lot of pressure before Kenny Quigg increased the lead with ten minutes remaining. Neil Cook hit a screamer in the dying moments but it wasn't enough to deny Rovers a tremendous victory.

Manager Dave Morris said: "It's a great result for us. We seem to have a bit of a problem where we don't play quite as well when we get our noses in front as we do to get there in the first place. Maybe that's because we're a young side at the moment but we'll be working to get rid of that bit of complacency." RADCLIFFE Boro drew 1-1 at home with Ashton United which in a disappointment after Boro's recent quality form. Ian Lunt opened the scoring on half time only for United to grab a share of the spoils when central defender Dave Channon put through his own goal on 63 minutes.

Club secretary David Murgatroyd said: "We didn't play particularly well. We seem to have lost a bit of sparkle!"

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