The good news of the previous week evaporated in front of Avenue's home supporters as Witton Albion won their first game of the year and put themselves back in the UniBond Premier Division play-off chase.

From feeling as though they had turned a corner by ending a miserable seven-game string of successive defeats with a draw at Whitby Town, Avenue went back to gifting their opponents a maximum.

A strong wind favoured the visitors in the first period and Avenue after the break but it was once again a distressing display of how not to defend.

"We have players out there making schoolboy errors, not just one-offs but time and again," said boss Gary Brook, prior to hearing he had been sacked.

"For the first goal we had our centre back claiming offside when it was

obvious the right back was keeping him on. We never play the offside trap - we never even do it in training - so where that came from, I don't know.

"We let Witton get two goals that were almost identical and they had another two chances one-on-one with our keeper. That was inexcusable. When we got to talk to them at half-time, we got the

message across.

"We defended better in the second half, we pushed up and compacted the game and that stopped Witton running at us. But it was too little too late. I thought we dominated the second half and created enough chances to win it but, as I keep saying, you can't play for 45 minutes and expect to win at this level.

"As daft as it sounds, we could have come in at 2-2 even though we let soft goals in. But they scored a third right on the stroke of half-time. That killed it and it was a very bad goal to concede.

"It came from our corner and we had just hit the post. They broke away and made it 3-0. If it had gone the other way we would have been back in it at 2-1 and got a boost at just the right time."

As Brook's predecessor Carl Shutt found out, when the gods are not smiling on you it is almost impossible to turn the tide. After 16 years of meteoric resurgence, Avenue have now suffered two seasons where nothing has gone right.

Even the spin of the coin went against them and Albion decided to have the advantage of the wind at their backs. They soon reaped their rewards for that obvious choice, racing into a 2-0 lead inside 15 minutes.

In the tenth minute, a through-ball caught the back four napping and allowed Dave Whittaker a clear run and he slotted past home goalkeeper Neil Thompson from just inside the area.

Things got worse for the young keeper. In a carbon-copy move, Mark Peers got through but Thompson pushed his shot around the post. Thompson misjudged Peers' flag-kick and bundled it over his own line. The counter-attack late in the half produced a similar through-ball, Andy Parkinson's long, high pass dropping over skipper Dean Jones, and Mike Moseley streaked away before curling a low shot round Thompson.

Brook made a double substitution just before the hour and Damien Dunne came on to make a telling contribution. Two minutes later he chipped to Tom Greaves, who sent the ball back out to Dean Calcutt and his cross was rammed home by Liam Flynn.

Avenue ensured a tense finish when Greaves made it 3-2 with eight minutes to go. The young forward grabbed his 12th goal of the season with a header following a corner.

The visitors' keeper clawed it out but the assistant referee signalled that it had crossed the line.