LEIGH Phillips went goal crazy and cracked a double hat-trick as Poppies made light work of their Hellenic Division One West visitors.

The 34-year-old front man fired the Wessex Leaguers into a second minute lead after getting on the end of Mark Smith's free kick.

And James Wood's boys never looked back as they fixed up a home third qualifying round clash against Melksham, who beat Thame United 2-1 on October 6.

Phillips, in the twilight of his career, has always netted regularly over the past 15 years during spells with Salisbury, Bashley and Lymington and New Milton.

But this clinical display will go down as one of his best performances as he grabbed another in the first half before adding four more after the break.

Fellow front runner Tom Jeffs hit a second-half hat-trick, while Scott Sanderson, Steve Strong and an own goal were also on the scoresheet.

The own goal came after Chris Toy's cross had been deflected into his own net by a Wootton defender.

Wootton, whom Wood had stressed before the match were "quite good", simply had no answer to Phillips' marauding presence.

Wood said: "Leigh scoring six goals speaks for itself, but his general game and link up play was outstanding as well.

"He is absolute quality. We knew he would cause problems with the physical side of his game. We knew Leigh would rough them up a bit.

"What we also have is quality players coming in from either side in Smithie and Steve Strong.

"Leigh would admit himself that he is probably a bit past his best but if you put the ball in the right spot he will score, and I think he was really helped by Smithie, who got seven assists.

"Tom started up front with Leigh and they scored nine goals between them. You can't ask for any more than that.

"They were both brilliant."

Wootton were already trailing 7-0 before they had their goalkeeper and centre forward sent off in the last 20 minutes as the game turned sour.

"But I don't want that to take anything away from our boy's performance," said Wood.

"What is even more satisfying is that we had watched Wootton against Brockenhurst and thought they might be vulnerable from free kicks.

"We worked on that in training on Thursday and inside two minutes Smithie sends over a free kick to the near post, Leigh gets in front of his man and touches it home.

"It is pleasing to work on something like that and then exploit it. That really set up the tone of the match."

Poppies: Kearn, McCabe, Cherrett, Lucas (M Toy 65), Morrell, Smith, Dancer (Hancock 60), Sanderson, Strong (C Toy 55), Phillips, Jeffs. Unused subs: Spillane, Wood.