Frome Town seem keen on pressing the self-destruct button at the moment.
They effectively gave away two first half goals, got back into the game on the stroke of half time, then in a moment of madness halfway through the second half, red cards for Jon Vance and Josh Klein-Davies allowed Chippenham to cruise through to the next round as Frome were once again reduced to nine men.
After manager Adrian Foster’s stern warnings during the week that Frome’s disciplinary record had to improve, the crowd were expecting a card free afternoon for Frome, but they were to be proved wrong.
The match started with Frome kicking up the slope and Chippenham’s Mark Francis was immediately keen to prove a point to his former team mates as he worked hard to carve out a shooting chance that just cleared the bar from the edge of the area.
Chippenham took the lead in the 20th as Rodriguez gave the ball away cheaply on the edge of the Chippenham area allowing former Robin Luke Ballinger to run into the huge space in midfield and after playing a 1-2, his shot hit the base of the Frome post and rebounded out for Darren Edwards to shoot home at the other post with Darren Chitty just getting a touch.
Chippenham’s second arrived in the 32nd as Ricky Hulbert put Chitty in all sorts of trouble with an underhit back pass, and as the Frome keeper just managed to clear the ball, Hulbert fouled on the edge of the Frome area, Ballinger curled the free kick in and Edwards produced a clinical header into the net from 15 yards.
Surprisingly, Frome finished the stronger of the two sides and they reduced the deficit in injury time as a low Vance corner was meticulously clipped home from fifteen yards by substitute Ollie Taylor. who had replaced Rodriguez six minutes earlier, and was scoring his fourth goal in three games.
Mark Francis was determined to make his point to his former team mates and he scored Chippenham’s third three minutes after the re-start as he popped up on the right, cut inside and curled a delightful, quality shot into the far corner of Chitty’s net, made all the more special by the fact that it was struck with the outside of his foot.
Frome had conscientiously avoided any yellow cards, it all went horribly wrong as Jon Vance took exception to a couple of heavy tackles and seemed to stamp down as he got to his feet, provoking an instant red card from the well placed referee and the usual 15 man melee, which, when the dust cleared, saw new signing Josh Klein-Davies also receive a red card for his part in an incident that had nothing to do with him.
Chippenham could and should have added a couple more but the two red cards just killed the match stone dead.
