Mark Lovell came off the treatment table to dump his former club out of the FA Cup on Saturday.

Faversham striker Lovell has been sidelined for a fortnight with a calf injury but he returned in style with a brace against Tonbridge in the first qualifying round tie.

“It’s always a bit special in the FA Cup,” admitted Lovell, who got through 90 minutes for the first time thie season. “To get a draw against a team from the league above and get a good result like that was really pleasing.

“When you are a league below you are always the underdog but the FA Cup is a special competition and when everyone gets over the white line it’s 11 against 11.

“We’ve seen that at any level with non-league teams beating Premier League teams – anything can happen on the day.

“I’ve been on ultrasound for the last two weeks, had lots of ice and with Ray Turner (manager) and Wayne Jones the physio we’ve been managing it and got myself back fit.

“I enjoyed a good two seasons at Tonbridge with Tommy Warrilow and Alex O’Brien. It’s a really good club, obviously I had a good relationship with the fans but when you cross that white line and play the 90 minutes it doesn’t come into it too much.”

Lovell’s experience up front saw him head Faversham in front and then make it 2-0 after firing home from Danny Walder’s brilliant assist.

“I don’t usually score many outside the box so the header was more my kind of goal,” added Lovell.

“The second one was a great ball from Danny Walder and thankfully I just hit it with the outside of my foot.

“Going 2-0 up is a tricky one. The game isn’t won and they got a goal back but we managed to get the important third goal. We still had to see ourselves through but we did thankfully.

“The team talk at half-time was that it was going to be a tougher 45 minutes in the second half than we had just had. We had to step up another gear and we did.”