ANDY Welsh was delighted to get a reaction from his side as Bury AFC beat Nelson 2-1 on Tuesday to return to the top of NWCL First Division North.

AFC saw their 28-game unbeaten run come to an end on Saturday when they suffered a disappointing 4-1 defeat at Abbey Hey to exit the FA Vase at the third round stage.

But goals from the returning Aiden Chippendale and leading scorer Lewis Gilboy saw AFC get back to winning ways - much to the pleasure of Welsh.

“It was about reacting to Saturday,” said Welsh. “One result won’t define us as a team and it didn’t on Saturday, it was a bad day at the office. So it was all about getting a result and I thought we did it in a magnificent way, it could have been a lot more than it was.

He added: “I thought we were excellent at times, patient in possession, trying to create openings and it was great to see some of the players who have been out for quite some while with injuries back out on the pitch and freshening us up.

“We wanted to do that from the weekend, not singling players out who might have felt that they had not done well but we picked a team to go and win a game.”

Welsh made five changes to the side that was dumped out of the FA Vase with Chippendale and Ben Wharton both returning after injury.

“Before they both got injured they were absolutely flying, both won player of the month in consecutive months,” added Welsh. “It was just a case of freshening it up and also getting minutes in their legs, that was the most important thing.”

Bury AFC head to Campion on Saturday and Welsh is looking for a marked improvement from their last away game at Abbey Hey last weekend.

“It is going to be a tough game,” said the AFC boss. “They have been a little bit up and down with their results so I’m sure they’ll be wanting to get a string of results going. So we just have to be ready, make sure we prepare well, make sure we recover well.”