Sidmouth Town vets made safe passage into the next round of the Devon Vets Cup after a 3-0 Manstone Lane win over Plymouth-based Millbridge, writes Brendon Willey.

On what was an ideal afternoon for football, the most active ingredient pre-match was the ‘Deep Heat’ that was liberally applied to limbs belonging to the respective veterans of their football clubs that were set to do battle!

It was Town who enjoyed the lion’s share of possession and the visiting side found it a tough ask to make any sort of progress against the back line of Andy O’Connor, JP Staniforth, Nick Gingell and the evergreen Gary ‘Chippy’ Carpenter, who collectively put in a superb shift to ensure that goalkeeper Mark Jenkins spent much of the contest as a spectator.

At the other end of the pitch, the chances were created for the Town strike force, but they went begging and, the longer the first half went on the large home crowd would have been forgiven for wondering if it was going to be ‘one of those games’.

However, just before the players got a deserved and much-needed rest, Simon Hudson applied a clinical finish to a sweeping move and Town took a 1-0 lead into the break. There was similar fare from the restart with Town seeing the greater amount of the ball and fashioning plenty of scoring opportunities, but a mixture of poor finishing and wayward shooting meant just the one goal remained between the teams as the game approached the hour mark. Home nerves were settled, though, when Hudson scored again to make it 2-0. A two-goal lead was no more than Town, with a dominant midfield performance from Jay Thorne, deserved.

With 15 minutes remaining, Craig Badcock touched the ball home from close range to complete the scoring.

Post match, centre-back Nick Gingell was named the Town Man of the Match award winner.