Bray Wanderers - 2 Longford Town - 0NATIONAL LEAGUE: If manager Pat Devlin believes he has work in progress with the quality of the young talent coming through the Bray Wanderers' ranks, Jason Byrne offered glimpses of the finished article.

Byrne clinically punished Longford with two excellent goals within 20 first-half minutes. The cruel twist for Bray is that their first win in 11 games wasn't enough to lift them off the bottom of the table.

Byrne hit his first goal after seven minutes and it's one Longford defender Avery John will cringe at the memory of as he dallied in attempting to deal with an innocuous Paul Forsyth ball forward.

It appeared that John had hauled Byrne down to give away a penalty, but referee Jimmy O'Neill seemed to play an advantage and Byrne - still on the ground - shot the ball home.

His second - on 27 minutes - secured the valuable points for Bray and Byrne could have claimed a hat-trick within four minutes of the restart, but he blazed over the top when played in by strike-partner Eamon Zayed.

Longford had wasted a very scoreable chance after only 90 seconds. Eric Lavine - who scored three times against Bray in their previous two meetings - drilled a close-range shot a foot wide after Seán Francis cleverly knocked a Seamie Crowe free kick into his feet.

A very competitive game saw Longford chase the 2-0 deficit hard with Walsh making two excellent stops from Darragh Sheridan and Barry Ferguson before half time.

Longford pressed hard late on and it was a mystery to their away fans that they failed to find the net.

They twice hit the crossbar through Avery John and then Vinny Perth, while John Walsh brought off a series of great stops.

BRAY WANDERERS: Walsh; O'Reilly, Tresson, O'Hanlon, Farrell; O'Connor, Fox (Gormley, 82 mins), Keogh, Forsyth; Zayed (Flood, 85) Byrne.

LONGFORD TOWN: O'Brien; Murphy, Ferguson (Mulvihill, 62 mins), John, Dillon; Kirby, Sheridan, Byrne, Crowe (Perth half-time); Lavine, Francis.

Referee: J O'Neill (Waterford).