SALISBURY boss Steve Claridge admitted his side “got away” with victory away at Poole Town, believing their 2-1 win to be somewhat of a smash-and-grab.

Whites travelled south to Dorset to face rivals Poole on Monday, but despite the home side’s domination in the first half and Toby Holmes’ second half strike, Salisbury battled back via Devon Arnold and Seokjae Lee.

Although Claridge conceded his side were perhaps fortunate to come away from the BlackGold Stadium with three points, he pointed out that a mixture of loan recalls and injuries thwarted his side’s approach to the game.

Reflecting on the encounter, Claridge told Journal Sport: “We got away with it, I thought.

“We’ve had (Ethan Sutcliffe) recalled, and Marvin was not fit.

“It’s had a massive effect on us, because obviously we've got Calvin (Brooks) out as well, and it just left us with not an awful lot to go with, in respect of we couldn't find a balance in the shape and they totally dominated us for the first half.

“We had to try and stop that overload in midfield, which we eventually did, but any other game would have probably been out of it.

“I'm not pretending anything otherwise, and people that have seen that game, they will feel that we've got away with it and I don't say that very often - normally it's the other way around, we're coming away thinking how have we not won that, but I think they'll probably have that feeling.

“We were much better second half. We had two moments of quality, we had to dig in and deal with a lot of pressure, which we did.

“I'm not trying to kid or pretend anything otherwise than we probably not got what we deserved, or probably they haven't got what they deserve.

“But I'll take that because, as I say, it doesn't happen very often, and when you lose the players that we've lost over the last couple of weeks, it just made it impossible for us to get any sort of real balance or shape in the side.

“I think they're probably the worst team to play against in this league when they're overloading the central midfield areas and we got run ragged, so we had to change it.

“Our substitutions worked, which was lovely, and we got away with it.”

Poole and Salisbury are set to do battle again this weekend, when Whites travel back down to Dorset for the FA Cup first qualifying round clash on Saturday (kick-off 3pm).