Coventry City 5 Maidstone United 0 FA Cup fifth-round match report: Ellis Simms’ hat-trick and two goals from Fabio Tavares end the Stones’ historic run

Maidstone’s extraordinary FA Cup run was ended by a clinical Coventry side at the CBS Arena on Monday night.

City striker Ellis Simms scored a first-half hat-trick to end the Stones’ chances of another upset to go with wins over Barrow, Stevenage and Ipswich.

And Fabio Tavares added a late double as the Sky Blues reached the last eight.

The visitors, backed by 4,800 fans behind the goal, gave everything they had, but the Sky Blues proved a step too far for George Elokobi’s FA Cup heroes.

Coventry, winners in 1987, hadn’t reached the quarter-finals since 2009 and were determined to take their chance against a Stones side 95 places below them in the football pyramid.

Maidstone, the first team outside the fifth tier to reach the last 16 since Blyth Spartans in 1978, made two changes to the side who won at Ipswich in round four.

They both came in defence with Reiss Greenidge in for the suspended Paul Appiah and Raphe Brown replacing skipper Gavin Hoyte at right-back.

Maidstone somehow weathered an early storm at Portman Road and while they probably saw more of the ball here in the opening stages, this time they fell behind to an early goal.

There had been an early warning sign when Lucas Covolan denied Haji Wright in the box after three minutes.

The Championship promotion hopefuls made no mistake from their next opening in the ninth minute.

Kasey Palmer, the best player on the pitch, slipped a neat pass into Simms’ path and he clipped the ball past Covolan.

Maidstone’s response was pretty good, with crosses from Liam Cole and Harry Kyprianou on either flank, but a second goal for the Sky Blues followed in the 14th minute.

The same combination did the trick again as Simms ran across his man from Palmer’s pass and beat