COLWYN Bay saw a 3-0 lead disintegrate into a stunning 4-3 defeat at home to Carlton Town.

A nightmare second half defensive performance threw away three points that had looked to be in the bag and dropped the side into the bottom six of the Unibond Division One South.

Manager Gary Finley put the blame squarely on his defence.

“We just seemed to get caught all the time by the long straight ball. They were four bad goals and it was just bad defending all round,” he said.

Colwyn Bay were 2-0 up at half-time with John Lawless crossing perfectly for Anthony Murt to score with a header after just eight minutes and Lewis Callaghan headed a second five minutes before the interval gave Carlton a respite.

When Neil Black scored Bay’s third two minutes into the second half it looked all over – and unfortunately the players seemed to think so as well.

They just switched off and Carlton suddenly found new belief as Marquin Smith scored with a close range header and Darryl Thomas ran clear of stationary defence to score a second 10 minutes later.

Bay were unlucky when Martin Crowder was breaking clear on goal only for the referee to bring play back, but a disputed penalty saw Phillip Bignall equalise.

In the second minute of added time Aiden Brady broke down the left and outpaced a labouring Bay defence to fire home the winner.