The Peacocks registered a pre-season victory on consecutive nights after they won 2-0 at Clevedon Town on Tuesday (July 23).

The match proved to be a good test for Taunton Town who fielded a different side the one that played at Cribbs the night before in a 3-0 win.

Town had an early goal chalked off for offside after Archie Ferris had latched onto Ryan Crouch’s ball forward to lob home keeper James Dunn before Adam Parkes showed a strong pair of hands to deny two Clevedon efforts from James Wakefield and Syd Camper.

The opening goal eventually came three minutes into the second half after Calum English-Brown was fouled just outside the box. Brain stepped up to arrow a free-kick into the top corner.

There were several other openings during the second half with Jake Hodgson coming close but it wasn’t until nine minutes from time that the Peacocks added another.

Brain’s low free kick in from the left was diverted into his own net by the outstretched leg of Callum Kingdon as Hodgson looked to capitalise.

Taunton are next in action on Friday night when they travel to Bishops Cleeve.

Assistant manager Steve Murray said: “On the whole, really happy to get goals and a clean sheet.

“It was probably a game of two halves from our point of view, we started really bright and moved the ball well, but as the game went on they caused us some problems.”

He said Clevedon are a good side and this fixture presented Taunton with the challenge of sitting off and letting the opposition have the ball

“At half time, we had to address a few things – I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the shape or anything, it was just the intensity. We dressed the lads down a little bit and second half was just night and day,” he said.

“From minute one (of the second half) we were turning the ball over a lot higher and our quality shone through.

“There were some good individual performances, but collectively it was good."

Looking ahead to the new season, Murray didn't want to make any predictions, but is confident.

He said: “It’s a work in progress. I think we looked in the first half like a team of 11 lads that are not a team at the moment and we know that – it’s going to take time to gel, but second half was much brighter.”

“We want to win, Taunton Town should always be trying to win games, we want the connection with the fans.

“We’ll keep it to ourselves, because we don’t want to set our hopes high in public and then have egg on our face but we’ve assembled some really talented players but they are young, this is a work in progress but we are really excited at what we can do here.

“If we can go into the second half of the season and be stronger that will be good.”