Kidderminster match winner Brian Smikle had the last laugh to beat league leaders Burton and ensure the Brewers’ title party remained on hold.

The 23-year-old climbed off the bench eight minutes into the second-half with Harriers trailing to Lee Morris’ goal before half-time – if it had stayed the same Blue Square Premier champions would have been crowned.

Harriers, anxious to strengthen their own grip in the play-off places, had other ideas.

Within 15 minutes, Matthew Barnes-Homer had equalised, before Smikle himself netted with 10 minutes to go for a home win.

Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat and for the former Albion youngster it was the ‘super-sub’ tag again, after an initial goalscoring salvo at Woking 13 days ago.

Over the 90 minutes, the Aggborough club edged close to third place, went within a whisker of dropping out of the play-off places before settling in fourth place come the close of affairs.

Everyone was breathless at the end of it, but Smikle among others was pleased with the days’ work.

He said: “That’s football – you’re up one minute and down the next, but we just have to go into these next three games looking for wins. We just believe we can pick up points wherever we go.

“It was the points that were important for us, we just had to do our best to ignore their celebration plans and get the win for ourselves. We wanted to make sure they didn’t win the league at our expense and we did that.

“We’ve done a lot of battling back in the last few games, we have some great lads in there and our confidence is sky high.”

Harriers boss Mark Yates hailed the never-say-attitude of his side as they extended their unbeaten run to 13 games and, with three games of the season remaining, the play-off chase is most definitely on.

He said: “There’s a great buzz in that dressing room, they’re a great set of lads though there’s still a lot of hard work to do – three ’90 minuters’ and then hopefully another three.

“We’ve shown a lot of courage in a lot of times of adversity, when things have gone against us. It could have knocked the stuffing out of a lot of teams, my boys have shown how much character, spirit and quality they have.”