Leyton Orient 2
Peterborough Utd 1
(League Two)

TEN-MAN Orient battled to victory to give their automatic promotion hopes a massive boost.

The hosts dominated early on and had already gone close twice through the lively Lee Steele, before they were handed a penalty on 14 minutes when Peterborough defender Phil Bolland handled a cross from Joe Keith.

The ever reliable Matt Lockwood smacked a powerful spot kick past an unlucky Mark Tyler who got fingertips to the ball.

The game was however turned on its head minutes later, after Connor attempted to shrug off Paul Carden and caught the Posh skipper with an elbow to the face and was shown a straight red by ref Paul Melin.

Orient almost doubled their lead before the break when Steele's excellent cross was met by a thumping Wayne Corden volley, that Tyler stopped with an excellent save.

Home stopper Glyn Garner was also in excellent form after the break, when during one of their rare attacks Richard Logan unleashed a fierce 20-yard drive that O's keeper was equal to with a fine stop.

Stung into life, the hosts doubled their lead on 69 minutes after another excellent piece of vision from Steele saw him pick out Corden, who danced his way in from the right flank and fired a powerful effort past Tyler.

Former O's trailist Lloyd Opara set up nervy ending when he fired home five minutes from time, but it really would have been criminal had Orient not secured all three points with this fine display of guts and courage.

Delighted boss Martin Ling said: "It was a great performance and I think had we not gone down to ten men we would have beaten them comfortably.

"I know that there isn't a fitter club in the League and tests at the start of the season proved that, so I knew we could still dig in and get a result even when we went down to ten men."