Fast start stuns Fareham Town as Bashley inflict first league defeat on Pete Stiles' men

The Reds boss felt his team produced a lacklustre performance in their 3-1 home loss.

Fareham were left with a mountain to climb, falling 2-0 down inside 10 minutes with Ronald Frost's penalty opener quickly followed by a Ryan Hamm effort.

Hamm then grabbed another to put Bashley three goals to the good before 40 minutes had been played.

Stiles was at a loss as to why his side were so far off the pace, particularly after a club record-equalling 8-0 FA Cup extra-preliminary round victory over Street the week previous.

The Fareham boss said: ‘We started very badly, poor first half, sometimes you just don’t know where it’s come from. You can virtually have the same team out and you think, ‘what’s that all about,’ and it was a case of that yesterday.

‘We gave away the penalty (for Bashley’s first goal) - we had chances to go ahead before that - we gave away the penalty and we let them in for such a soft second.

‘We hadn’t settled and no sooner than that they scored a second. I felt we got a couple of harsh bookings, which is neither here or there, but everything seemed to be going against us.

‘Everything we hit would come off the woodwork or their keeper got to, anything they hit seemed to go in yesterday. It was the opposite of the week before, really.’

Dominant Bashley had the three points practically wrapped up inside 35 minutes.

Returning defender Archie Willcox, who had spent brief spells with Gosport Borough and AFC Portchester in pre-season, gave away a penalty after five minutes, with Frost firing the visitors in front.

Things got worse for Fareham four minutes later when Hamm netted before grabbing another on 34 minutes.

Substitute Kai Sterne struck for the Reds but it was too little too late arriving five minutes into second half stoppage-time.