FROME Town's recent winning run was brought to an end last weekend as they were beaten at home by play-off hopefuls Cirencester Town.

For long periods, the match resembled the slate grey sky as both defences were fully in charge and goalkeepers were effectively onlookers but after Frome had seen a golden chance go begging, the visitors took all three points with a close-range winner from Nat Jarvis.

With just Anthony Tonkin replacing the unavailable Chris McGrath, manager Adrian Foster kept the same side that had done so well in midweek against Weymouth.

The first chance of the match fell to Cirencester’s Aidan Bennett in the 22nd minute after Jarvis had set him up with a good right-wing cross but his volley from twelve yards was well wide of the goal.

Frome were struggling to get any change from a well-marshalled and uncompromising Cirencester defence, and it became harder as they lost the slide rule free-kick ability of Jon Vance in the 37th minute when he was replaced by Josh Morgan-Williams due to injury.

The first quarter of the second half produced no real incident and in a bid to add some impetus to their efforts, Frome made two more substitutions, with Aaron Rodriguez replacing Ricky Hulbert and Ben Thomson replacing Ollie Taylor soon afterwards.

For the first time in the match, the Robins had a great chance in the 68th minute as a great run from Matt Smith produced a perfect ball to Thomson (who had made good ground to get into position), but the ball rolled under his foot with the goal at his mercy and any touch at all would almost certainly have produced a goal.

Sensible refereeing was the winner in the 71st minute as the injured Matt Smith appeared to be trodden on by Leigh Henry, and on another day, the reactions following the incident would have seen perhaps a couple of red cards, but both sides remained at full strength with just a single yellow being shown.

Frome had another good chance eight minutes later as a Lewis Haldane flick set Thomson free on the right and he cut in and looked set to score but managed to pull his shot wide of the near post with Glyn Garner struggling to get into position.

As fate would have it, from the goal kick, Cirencester immediately counter-attacked and a low right-wing cross found Jarvis unmarked six yards from goal.

And the Ciren man managed to turn and hook the ball into the net to seal all three points.

Frome went looking for the equaliser in the remaining minutes but the Cirencester defence remained as resolute as ever.