New Supermarine manager John Murphy enjoyed a dream start to life in the Hunts Copse hot-seat, as his troops overcame a goal deficit to triumph 2-1 at Redditch United.
Marine had won just a single league game prior to Murphy's arrival last week. But the man who led Cheltenham Town to the Conference showed that he has lost none of his old Midas touch.
Strangely, it was one of Marine's poorer performances this season. Their passing was disjointed, and they were thoroughly outplayed for 80 one-sided minutes.
But Murphy has already instilled one ingredient sadly lacking in previous Marine displays this term. Resilience.
The Marine rearguard were superb throughout, and after soaking up enormous pressure, Murphy's men hit their hosts with a double sucker-punch.
Marine struggled to come to terms with a poor playing service early on, and the visitors really should have trailed at the break.
Redditch's 14-goal striker Paul Danks was a constant threat, grazing the goal-frame on a number of occasions.
Danks' presence eventually proved to hot to handle on the stroke of half time, when Pete Farrow was forced to impede the lively frontman in the penalty area.
Danks himself took the spot-kick, but contrived to blaze wide of Paul Haines' goal.
The hosts continued to look the more likely after the interval, and Danks eventually atoned for his penalty howler on the hour.
Marine's defensive pairing of Steve Davis and Andy Jennings were, for once, slow to react to a Redditch counter, and player-boss Nicky Cross flicked a through-ball to Danks who ran into the box unopposed before striking crisply beyond Haines.
Marine really didn't look like scoring at this point, and their cause was hardly helped by the loss of attacker Michael Silvanus, who was withdrawn after a nasty collision with the home dugout.
With 15 minutes remaining, Murphy went for broke and threw midfield dynamo Steve Bennett up front. Talk about paying dividends.
Within five minutes, Bennett chased down a loose ball, beat his marker and struck for goal. His effort was parried by Matt Jones, but Tate Hulbert was on hand to volley home the rebound.
Without doubt, Marine and Murphy would have settled for a draw at this point, but Bennett had other ideas.
With five minutes remaining, Haines pulled off a great save from Danks, Marine broke quickly, Hulbert fed Bennett and the makeshift forward arrowed a sweet left-foot drive into the corner of the net, sealing a debut win for Murphy.
"We're really pleased," said the new Marine supremo. "The spirit and resilience of the players was absolutely outstanding."
"Redditch had a lot of the ball, but we restricted their goal scoring opportunities.
"Hopefully the confidence will start creeping back as a result of the win, and that will give us something nice to work with now."
Marine stay bottom despite the win, but the gap between them and Cirencester is down to two points.
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