Invicta pocketed a very welcome £4,000 in prize money from Saturday’s ultimately comfortable 3-0 win in their Buildbase FA Trophy Second Qualifying Round tie against Step Eight side Didcot Town at the Fullicks Stadium.
They could hardly have made a better start as the increasingly impressive Kane Rowland confidently collected a forward ball just inside the 18-yard box and steered it past young Diddy keeper Matt Crowther in only the third minute of the game.
Ade Yusuff did everything but score in this game, twice hitting the woodwork and forcing a couple of testing saves from the goalkeeper while the visitors failed to take any of several reasonable chances at the other end where sponsors’ man of the match Finn O’Mara and the back to fitness Nat Blanks and Phil Starkey all played well.
And it was a fine run on the left and cross into the middle that panicked Didcot skipper Adam Learoyd into turning the ball into his own net to double Folkestone’s lead 10 minutes short of the interval.
By then they had already lost striker Johan Ter Horst with the recurrence of his knee injury but it was his replacement Ian Draycott who came off the bench to stroke home the 79th minute penalty that made the game safe after the excellent Yusuff was bundled over in the box.
Excellent defending including a tremendous header off his own goal-line by O’Mara earned the young defender his man of the match award from the match sponsors.
With Cheriton Road somewhere close to normal following Thursday’s massive fire in Morrisons’ supermarket this was a fairly confident and very competent display that deservedly puts Folkestone in the hat for tomorrow’s Third Round Draw with hopes of further luck with a home tie high.
Invicta: Roberts; O’Mara, Blanks, Starkey, Davies, Dolan, Hasler (McCann), Everitt (Vincent), Rowland, Yusuff. Ter Horst (Draycott)
Subs not used: Newman, Shaw