Sidbury United travelled to Zembard Lane for a Fresha League top flight game and found themselves taking on a home side fielding a number of players who had played in the Somerset side’s last Toolstation Western League game.

The front three for the hosts had too much for the United back line and three unanswered first half goals gave Chard a 3-0 interval lead.

They increased that to 6-0 before making changes that ultimately saw United come more into the game.

With much of the threat from Chard out of the action United enjoyed much more of the play and they scored twice late on through Danny and Dave Green, the latter coming off the bench to score his goal.

United boss Jeremy Schofield was understandably disappointed post match, but not with his players. He said: “I fail to understand why clubs with senior teams playing at a higher level are given midweek matches, especially at home when it’s fairly obvious that they’ll field an eleven that has little or no comparison with the team they’d have fielded had the game been played on a Saturday!”

He continued: “They simply had too much for us and that’s perfectly understandable. My lads gave their all.”

On Saturday United begin a run of four successive Saturday home matches with the visit of Hatherleigh United for an East Devon Senior Cup tie.

The week after they host Stoke Gabriel in the Devon Premier Cup and then, seven days later, take on Hatherleigh again, this time in a league game.

They end the month with a Byes Lane with the current leaders of the Premier Division, Elmore.

Pete Grover, who missed the midweek defeat, returns to the side and, after Dave Green came off the bench to score at Chard (he was unable to start owing to fitness concerns), the hope is that he will be able to play a full 90 minutes.

The United boss says; “It’s a cup match and as I have always said, cup ties are special, they offer the chance to make headlines further down the road in the competition and so in, order to get ourselves there, we need to win the early round matches!”