Jon Davies’ spectacular brace put Buckland Athletic to the sword on Saturday as Frome Town stormed to a 3-0 win at Homers Heath.

Ben Withey opened the scoring on 14 minutes and a pair of goals before the break from the ever-present Davies booked Frome’s spot in the First Qualifying Round.

Frome’s quality shone from the outset as they forced Buckland into absorbing heaps of pressure in the first 10 minutes. The Western League Bucks could hardly get a foot on the ball and struggled to avert the Robins’ relentless sieging.

The visitors showed a sign of things to come on eight minutes. Laurent Davis-Wilson, on his first start since returning to Somerset from Dorchester Town, displayed awesome strength as he outmuscled the Buckland defence and opened an opportunity for Owen Humphries to shoot but his effort trickled safely into the hands of Andy Collings.

Frome full-back Withey put the visitors on the board on 14 minutes. Davies cleverly danced his way around two defenders before trying his luck from an angle. The shot was skewed and this appeared to catch Collings off-guard as he could only parry into the path of the arriving Withey, who had the simple task of tapping into the open net.

Controversy struck just beyond the 20-minute mark. A long ball forward relieved Buckland of some pressure and saw a chance for the lightning-fast Scott Crocker to give chase. Having beaten the defender to the ball and arrived moments before goalkeeper Kyle Phillips, Crocker was brought down from behind. After lengthy discussion between the officials, a free-kick was awarded and nothing more, much to the dismay of those in yellow.

The free-kick was cleared only as far as Josh Webber, who fired a rocket of a shot towards goal but saw it saved well by Phillips.

Frome doubled their advantage on the half-hour mark. Davies played a sumptuous one-two with Humphries to split the defence and executed a skilful flick over the onrushing Collings before running onto it and walking the ball into the vacant goal.

Three minutes later, the Robins netted their third and final goal of the afternoon. Buckland midfielder Ben Carter was adjudged to have brought down Davis-Wilson in the box and 32-year-old Davies duly tucked home the resulting spot kick, sending Collings the wrong way.

A cross-cum-shot on the stroke of halftime appeared to spark some life into the hosts. Sam Morcom’s cross rattled the post with the ‘keeper rooted to the spot and it bounced out to Webber, who pulled the trigger almost immediately. Phillips was forced into an acrobatic diving save to deny any sniff of a comeback before the break.

Buckland gave a good account of themselves in the second half and were deserving of a goal. Just beyond the hour mark, Buckland charged forward in numbers and crafted some space wide on the right. The ball was hooked backwards across the box but the well-oiled Frome rearguard was wise to the delivery and cleared.

The visitors saw red 10 minutes from time when substitute Alex Monks was given his marching orders for a high-boot on Carter. But Buckland could not capitalise on the personnel advantage and Frome held out.

Upon full-time, Buckland boss Dan Hart said: ‘I sensed from the moment that I arrived today that we had rested on our laurels a little bit from Tuesday night’s win.

‘I thought we were a little bit flat [today] and I felt that we showed a little bit too much respect to the opposition, certainly in the first half. [There were] some individual errors in our game as well where we were forced into some changes.

‘When you play against teams of this quality, with the movement that they had in the final third of the pitch and the structure and the size that they had across the pitch you’re going to wind up on the wrong end of a 3-0 score line.

‘We didn’t do enough to be in the game,’ Hart continued, ‘and the score line at halftime was just. In the second half I felt that we stuck to our guns; we could’ve changed shape, matched them up and tried to see the game out but we went after them and I think the fact that they changed their shape accordingly is a nod to us and I think we should take some credit for that.’

Despite the score line, Hart believes that his side can take both lessons and positives from the match.

‘I think the positives, albeit we’ve not started games well enough throughout the whole season, were that we started the second half with a level of intent - even at 3-0 down - to go after the game against a higher-league opposition,’ Hart said.

‘That’s certainly the biggest positive for me and we did cause them problems when we did that. The learning for me personally is that I need to eke out quite quickly this season the way in which we aren’t quite mentally prepared at the start of games.

‘It’s always tricky and hard to concede three goals as well - I pride myself on having teams that are tight at the back and we’ve got some good defenders at this club, so to concede three goals in 45 minutes is not acceptable against any opposition.

‘The players will learn from that. I think we’ve got to have more structure when were out of possession. When August is done and the games start to even out and we play every Saturday and have the opportunity to train that might help us. So, lots of positives.’