GOATACRE captain Ed Wilkins hopes Sunday’s washout of their National Village Cup quarter-final against Cornish side Roche will work in his side’s favour.

With heavy rain falling in Cornwall while the Goats were still en route last weekend, the home side took the decision to call the game off early and save Wilkins’ men an unnecessary trip south.

The contest has since been rescheduled for this Sunday - but battle will now commence in Wiltshire at Goatacre’s own home.

Although Wilkins does not think anything is a given ahead of the clash, he hopes that they can make the most of their newly-acquired home advantage.

“We had just gone past Bristol on the M5 when they gave us a call, so they let us know quite early, which was pretty good of them,” said Wilkins.

“They sent us a few pictures of the pitch and we could all see that it wasn’t going to be playable, so it did save us getting all the way down there.

“It isn’t a bad thing as it means we can get them back to our place now and we’ll be playing on our own ground and hopefully we can get a good crowd in to cheer us on too.

“It probably doesn’t make a lot of difference, we know that all the teams who get this far are going to be decent so it’s going to be a tight game wherever it’s played.

“But being at home does help us out a bit as we know what we would want to do there. We’d look to bat first and get a good score and then we know how to defend that.

“We left at 7.30am on Sunday so that’s quite an early start. It’ll be nice not to have to do that and it’ll be something else that might work in our favour too as they’ll have to do it instead.”

The Goats are chasing a first semi-final appearance since 2012 and Wilkins says they are out to banish the demons of a home defeat at the hands of Hertfordshire side Reed that day.

“We got to the semi-finals three years ago and ended up losing,” added Wilkins.

“We were obviously disappointed with how that finished so we are looking to try to get there again, and if we can do that then we will look to go one step further this time.”

Goatacre also boosted their West of England Premier League Premier Two survival hopes by defeating Lechlade on Saturday.

Rob Murphy’s 3-46 helped the Goats clinch a 16-run win to move them 12 points clear of the drop zone.