WHOEVER said the league table doesn’t lie must have been telling fibs.

On the evidence of this shambolic and ill-disciplined performance, play-off chasing Larkhall Athletic can count themselves fortunate to be in the hunt.

Conversely, the ease with which Wimborne brushed aside the Western League champions would suggest their season is far from over.

The Larks had arrived at Cuthbury bidding to extend a four-match unbeaten run which had thrust them into the Division One South & West promotion picture.

And while Wimborne’s current form had been reasonable, defeats by AFC Totton and Taunton since the turn of the year had seen them slip off the pace.

What better time, then, than to play your joker. Step forward Larkhall’s hapless goalkeeper Alex Shaftoe.

With just 36 seconds on the clock, the stopper contrived to gift Magpies a lead they would never look likely to surrender.

A routine back-pass should have been food and drink for Shaftoe until his Lionel Messi impression turned very messy. He looked far from comfortable with the ball at his feet, a situation Jon Blake seized on, with Shaftoe’s hurried clearance striking the midfielder and rolling into an unguarded net.

Sarcastic cheers from the Cuthbury faithful greeted Shaftoe when he managed, albeit at the second attempt, to snaffle a speculative shot from Jamie Davidson before the stopper was berated by his own team-mate following another awful clearance.

Although he saved from Sam Griffin before the visitors appealed in vain for a penalty after Ross Lye had gone to ground under a challenge from Wimborne’s emergency goalkeeper Paul Roast, Shaftoe was anything but finished.

Another ground-open-up-and-swallow-me moment came when Shaftoe dropped Griffin’s corner on the head of team-mate Matt Thorne whose luckless own goal doubled Wimborne’s lead in the 10th minute.

The comedy of errors continued when Larks captain Ollie Price sliced a Griffin cross into his own goalkeeper’s hands, the relief palpable among the visitors when Shaftoe managed to hold on to the ball.

Although his catastrophic blunders proved costly, Shaftoe could not be held responsible for Larkhall throwing in the towel in the first half.

They offered precious little going forward and Roast, starting in goal for Wimborne for the first time in his long career with the club, could have been forgiven for putting up his shooting stick.

Thorne’s effort five minutes into the second half was correctly chalked out for offside before Mark Gamble was booked for diving after going to ground under Shaftoe’s challenge.

Larkhall midfielder Ross Lye, yellow carded for simulation in the first half, received a second caution and his marching orders for speaking out of turn following one of many baffling decisions from referee Jonathan Hollier in the 61st minute.

And while the official’s ambivalent display had the Larkhall bench hot under the collar on a number of occasions, Lye’s needless dismissal had visiting manager Wayne Thorne asking the player whether he was “thick”.

Wimborne, who rarely had to break sweat to become the first team to do the double over Larkhall this season, put the finishing touches to a facile victory when Gamble sprung the offside trap and rounded Shaftoe to complete the scoring after 68 minutes.

Magpies: Roast, Biles, Lupton, Maybury, Costello, Blake (Holmes, 80), Griffin (Waters, 88), Davidson, Kellaway, Gamble (Wilcox, 84), Stokoe. Unused sub: Field (g/k).