Paddy Davitt Royston 0, Wroxham 5: Wroxham chief David Batch insists the Yachtsmen should fear no-one after clinching an FA Vase quarter-final against Ridgeons Premier Division rivals Needham Market.

Paddy Davitt

Royston 0, Wroxham 5

Wroxham chief David Batch insists the Yachtsmen should fear no-one after clinching an FA Vase quarter-final against Ridgeons Premier Division rivals Needham Market.

Batch's men destroyed a Royston outfit that had lost only twice at home in 14 months to set up a cross-border tussle at Bloomfields on February 27 for a place in the last four.

Steve Spriggs silenced the majority of a bumper 650-crowd at Garden Walk with a clinical early strike before doubling his tally six minutes after the break.

Royston's tormentor-in-chief then nutmegged Arin Fehmi to tee up Danny White who rifled past Jorden Gibson. Owen Paynter struck a cool penalty before Matt Daniels despatched a fine fifth following a free-flowing Wroxham move that underlined the visitors' total dominance of the cup tie.

Scott Howie was belatedly pressed into action with an acrobatic tip over on 71 minutes before his customary penalty save prevented Luke Robins slotting a late consolation.

Batch is convinced Norfolk's FA Vase flagbearers can now secure a semi-final berth at their Suffolk rivals later this month in the biggest local footballing derby of the season.

“It's a huge tie, no doubt about that,” he said. “I actually knew it would come out of the hat on the evening before the draw - I was convinced, and when I heard it my reaction was, 'great', because we can beat them.

“Whether we do, how the occasion goes on the day, how we handle it, well, who knows? They are second favourites for the competition and they will be strongly fancied, but we beat the third favourites in the fourth round and we know we can do it again.”

Batch takes his side to Bloomfields tomorrow for a dress rehearsal in the Ridgeons League Cup quarter-finals.

“I've got a few thoughts and decisions about how we play that game but I believe the Vase tie will be very different,” he said.

“Needham will be expected to win. They are the favourites, at home, going a lot better than us in the league, they've reached the quarter-finals for three seasons in a row now and they will hope to go even further.

“I feel we are more than capable of winning. We proved that when we went down there in the league before Christmas and should have won the game, but we drew 0-0.

“Most importantly the players will know they are capable of losing a game like that, which is perhaps a different mentality than we needed to show here, but anything can happen.”

Batch praised his side's professionalism at Garden Walk.

“We just said to them from the reports we've had we're a better side,” he said. “But I wanted us to focus on beating them - not the occasion, not the crowd, just come here and focus on winning.

“The funny thing is the boys in the dressing room were not elated, I'd say they are content, because they expected it.

“They knew we could physically and mentally impose ourselves on them, that was our plan and we did it. The boys carried it out to a tee and got the result they thoroughly deserved. I think our approach was correct.

“We came here and we weren't thinking about Wembley or dreaming of what might happen if we get past this one, it was all about winning this football match and what we had to do to achieve that goal.”

Batch admitted Spriggs' fourth-minute strike was the perfect way to silence an expectant home crowd.

“We felt we might be able to exploit any space in behind in the early stages and Spriggsy has done that and produced a great finish,” he said. “There was about 20 minutes I felt in the first half where they started to pop it around without really getting into our box to hurt us.

“We were defending around our 18-yard line well so we changed it slightly just towards the end of the first half and from then on we started to boss it and implement our plan. We had the players who could come on and do that as well and it just got harder and harder for them to stay with us.”

Royston: Gibson, Apostolos, Fehmi, Stocker, Cain, Collins, Edwards (Bull 65), Young (Malins 65), Turl, Lockett, Robins. Subs (not used): Barlow, Cook, Crosk. Booking: Cain

Wroxham: Howie, Pauling, Howes, Challen, McNeil, Simpson (Lemmon 87), Spriggs (Paynter 72), Eastaugh, Cook, White, Gilmore (Daniels 61). Subs (not used): Carus, King, Self.

Goals: Spriggs (7, 51), White (53), Paynter (74), Daniels (81). Bookings: Challen, Howie

Referee: I Bentley. Att: 650.