Keishon Bean and Clay Darrell each scored to help guide St David’s into the next round of the FA Challenge Cup over Corona League outfit FC Rhino in drizzly and foggy conditions at Lord’s yesterday (Monday).

The home side started brightly on the small and bumpy pitch, keeping the ball confidently and evading their visitors’ pressure.

They were often susceptible to the counter-attack though, especially when the full-back pair of Andrew Paynter and Keljon Butterfield pushed forward. But the Corona side struggled to make any impact when they did get forward on the break, with Warriors captain Vance Wall-Brown and Dimitri Butterfield mopping up any dangerous attacks.

St David’s would eventually open the scoring from a simple long pass by Tre McCallan that the visitors failed to deal with, finding its way through a narrow corrido in the Rhino defense. Visiting goalkeeper Jez Burrows sprinted out of his goal to try and clear the pass away from danger, but mistimed his run and allowed St David’s striker Clay Darrell to nip in and chip the ball over him to give the home side the lead.

Rhino showed some urgency after they went behind, seizing loose balls more quickly and starting to control the scrappy midfield battle, thanks in large part to the hard work of Robert Richardson and Christian Petty. They could have restored parity when Dylan Desilva was taken down around 25 yards out in a good position for a direct free-kick. Quintonio Lema took the set-piece, but smashed his effort against the far post with goalkeeper Chazz Knight totally beaten.

They continued to pile pressure on their hosts and adjusted their formation out of possession to overload the midfield area and make things even more difficult for their hosts to play forward into dangerous positions; their counter-attacking strategy was working perfectly fine, but when they got into the final third, the final pass was lacking.

St David’s soaked up the pressure and found the two-goal cushion they needed just before half-time, passing the ball through the Rhino press before Keishen Bean fed a pass into the left-channel for Aaron Paynter to run onto. He timed his run to perfection and reached Paynter’s return pass, slotting into the far corner past Burrows.

Rhino gave their starters less than 15 minutes to steady the ship and salvage some pride from a match that was quickly getting away from them. A triple change injected some fresh legs into the Rhino midfield but couldn’t turn the tide as promotion hopefuls St David’s comfortably punched their ticket to the last 16 of the FA Challenge Cup.

SCORERS

St David’s 2: Darrell 30, Bean 42

FC Rhino 0

TEAMS

St David’s (4-2-3-1): C Knight 6 – Andrew Paynter 5 (sub: M Proctor 57 5), K Butterfield 5 (sub: J Pitcher 70), V Wall-Brown 6, D Butterfield 6 – T McCallan 6 (sub: D Baker 70), Aaron Paynter 6 – C King 5 (sub: J Wales 83), K Bean 6, K Wilson 5 – C Darrell 6 (sub: D Minors 83) Substitutes not used: Z Scott, S Ming; Booked: Andrew Paynter, V Wall-Brown

FC Rhino (4-2-3-1): J Burrows 4 – K Wilkinson 5, A Butterfield 6 (sub: Y Dill 57 5), D Woods 5 (sub: R McLaughlin 57 5), S Smith 5 – R Richardson 6, C Petty 5 (sub: N Mulder 80) – M Burgess 4 (sub: Z Richardson 57 4), Q Lema 5, C Castle 5 – D Desilva 4 (sub: R Saggar 71) Substitutes not used: S Cox, J Minors; Booked: Desilva

Referee: D Jackson