Cray Wanderers 4 East Thurrock 1: Chris Dickson scores twice as Cray take big step towards safety

Chris Dickson scored twice as Cray Wanderers climbed out of the bottom three in the Isthmian Premier on Wednesday night.

It means the worst-case scenario now for Neil Smith's Cray is a play-off place to preserve their step 3 status, as they can no longer finish in the bottom two.

But it also means that East Thurrock need to beat Horsham on Saturday and hope Cray fail to win at Bishop's Stortford. Anything but three points for East Thurrock will leave Cray safe.

Manager Smith was only appointed five games ago but this was his first win in charge of Cray.

"I'm delighted for the club and the boys," said Smith "We came in three weeks ago and Gary (Hillman, chairman) asked us to do our best to stay up and build a club.

"We took the challenge and knew it was going to be a tough one. To be fair we should have got results in the first two games and we shouldn't be relying on the last two.

"We're not done yet, we have got another game on Saturday and who knows what might happen - I really don't know the mathematics of it. I'm delighted for the players, the supporters and the owners of the club.

"It was a must-win. We saw the results from the weekend and we knew we had to win tonight but we didn't want to put the pressure on the boys (by saying that). If we didn't win it's a tough ask to then go and beat Bishop's Stortford."

Experience was key for Cray. Not only did Dickson provide the class in attack but Sam Wood pulled the strings in midfield, talked the youngsters around him through the game - and then scored a wonderful fourth goal late on to wrap up the points.

"Dicko was outstanding, we had a bit of a deeper role for him to help the young guys around him - that's the Dicko I know," said Smith.

"Sam Wood was immense again, he