Kings Langley were edged out in a nine-goal thriller at home to Biggleswade Town last night after a contest that provided huge entertainment for the crowd but probably didn’t go down well with the respective managers from a defensive point of view.

The tone was set as early as the fifth minute when Conrad Lucan picked up a poor clearance to place a low shot into the corner of the net to give the visitors the perfect start, but Kings responded with a Dean Hitchcock 30-yarder tipped over.

However, they looked second best until a David Hutton diagonal free-kick just cleared the head of Jamie Calvin, but was stabbed home by Stevie Ward to restore parity in the 27th minute.

Six minutes later the cameo was reproduced from the same spot, but this time Calvin’s glancing header from Hutton’s free-kick was perfectly executed and Kings were on a high.

As the half closed it was the Waders who came back with Xavi Comas pulling off two good saves from Rhys Hoenes and Craig Daniel.

However, Kings started the second period in devastating form, as Hutton executed a perfect flick over the head of a defender, turned to collect and laid the pass into the path of Manny Duku, who put the ball through the legs of Ian Brown.

But if the hosts thought that was job done, they were sadly mistaken as Town came back to bring a flying save out of Comas and then pulled one back with a shot on the turn by Inih Effiong.

Within a minute, they were back on terms as a cross from the right was flicked home by Tony Burnett and the hosts were reeling as the pendulum swung again.

Both sides seemed to pause for breath, but the feeling that there were more goals to come proved correct when a stunning free-kick by the lively Hoenes seemed to be going over until it dipped at the last minute to graze the underside of the bar.

Three minutes later Kings gave proceedings a nudge in the opposite direction when Hutton completed a quartet of assists when he squared from the right and the incoming Hitchcock delivered a low 25-yard rocket into the net.

Had the scoring ended at that point, the draw would probably have been a fair outcome for two attacking teams, but fate decided otherwise and a challenge in the Kings box resulted in a penalty, powerfully dispatched by Effiong to make it 5-4.

There was still time for Brown to pull off a superb acrobatic point blank save from substitute Jonny Munday in the third minute of injury time, but this was another heartbreaker for Kings, with four goals conceded in the last ten minutes in the last three games costing four points.

Kings Langley: Comas; Folarin, Calvin, Johnson, Pattison (Munday 90); Grotenhuis (Gallagher 85), Hitchcock; Ward (Cox 71), Hutton, Amoo; Duku. Subs not used: Bush and Green.