ABERYSTWYTH Town will be looking to close the four-point gap on seventh-placed Newtown when the two sides meet in a crucial mid Wales derby at Park Avenue on Friday (8pm).

The Seasiders had to settle for a share of the spoils at Rhyl last week when a Toby Jones free-kick beat keeper Chris Mullock with just seven minutes to go to snatch a 2-2 draw.

It left manager Matthew Bishop feeling that it was two points dropped, and he thought the decision of referee Iwan Griffith to award a free kick for a challenge by Luke Sherbon on Zyaac Edwards was a very harsh call.

“I’m not sure that it was a free-kick, I’ll look forward to seeing it again, but I think it was a bad decision, which has cost us the three points today,” said Bishop after the match.

“I thought we played really well. I’d say they had the lion’s share of possession, but I think we had the better chances and on another day we might have scored a few more goals.”

Aberystwyth were not helped by the fact that their team bus had been held up due to a road traffic accident, which resulted in the kick-off time being delayed by quarter of an hour.

Aber fell behind to an early Josh Davies goal, but a Mark Jones penalty, his first goal after joining Aber on loan from Carmarthen, and a Geoff Kellaway strike put Aber in control.

“It has taken some of the lads six or seven hours to get here, and we didn’t arrive here until quarter to eight,” said the Aber manager.

“After the journey that we’ve had, and the problems getting here, to be disappointed with just a point away from home is a credit to the lads.”

There is now greater competition in the Aber squad, with no less than eight additions since the turn of the year, and new striker Lee Healey was also on the bench last Friday, after becoming available to play again.

Cledan Davies, Jack Rimmer, Ryan Wollacott, Kostya Georgievsky and Dafydd Jones completed perhaps Aber’s strongest bench of the season.

The Seasiders, who have been boosted by central defender Phil Baker on loan from The New Saints, now turn their attentions to facing a Newtown side that has moved up into the Europa League Play-Off position.

Aber can take heart from the four points they took off the Robins in the first phase, winning 1-0 at home and drawing 2-2 away, but expect a tough test against Chris Hughes’ form side.

Unbeaten in six league matches since their Boxing Day defeat at Park Avenue, Newtown have notched four successive wins to lift themselves up into seventh position, including a 4-1 win over Airbus UK last weekend."It is important for us now that we don't let things slip," said Robins' boss Hughes. "We have set the standard in the last five games, performance-wise and with results."We know what is required of us in this bottom six. If you look two or three months ago we were bottom, so we aren't getting ahead of ourselves."We didn't get too low when we were down the bottom, and we are not going to get too high when we are winning, because this is an unforgiving league."