Barnsley FC 3 Bristol Rovers 0: Josh Benson, Devante Cole and Luke Thomas excel as Reds outclass Rovers

The battering ram up top was ‘Smash’ Warboys - who hailed from Goldthorpe - and the goal poacher was ‘Grab’ Bannister, from Bradford

Given previous evidence this season, there had been precious little smash up top for Barnsley and no grab either.

They emphatically made amends for that on Tuesday night against the current Rovers crop and looked like a real team in the process for the first time in a good while and sent out a warning to League One rivals.

The smash came from Josh Benson, a player whose transformation under Michael Duff is becoming a delight to behold.

He crowned a classy performance by blasting home a fine third goal from distance on 56 minutes - his third in just under a week.

It was the prelude for the Pontefract Road end to sing his name followed by a chorus of club anthem ‘Three Little Birds.’ Both chants weren’t aired much last season, if at all.

The platform arrived courtesy of two early goals. Duff made a big call to start with Devante Cole and it reaped a harvest by way of his first league goal since last October and more importantly, his best all-round performance since signing for the club in the summer of 2021.

Should he hit that level consistently, then Barnsley have a player and a striker.

Another milestone goal - a first-ever in the league for Jordan Williams - doubled the Reds money en route to Barnsley securing their first midweek win at Oakwell since beating Rovers’ arch rivals Bristol City in March.

You had to go back even further to February for the last time they won successive games at home.

Duff has spoken about making Oakwell an unpleasant and inhospitable venue for visiting teams - purely in a footballing sense of course - and it arrived here in practice in refreshing rain.

Thankfully, the pre-match sting surrounding Joey Barton's first return to Oakwell since his much-publicised tunnel contretemps with Daniel Stendel in 2019 had been taken away somewhat by deferential comments between rival camps with Barton being a former team-mate of Duff and Martin Paterson's at Burnley.

Barton also struck a benign tone in expressing his satisfaction of his club's part in helping to get Luke Thomas back on the 'straight and narrow' after a difficult time in his football career and life - even if he did not want his former loanee to show too much of his renaissance on Tuesday.

Barton hoped he would have a 'stinker', only for the opposite to transpires on a night when all that was missing from a beguiling display from Gloucestershire-born Thomas was a goal.

He had a stormer and proved a real irritant for harassed Rovers and had able accomplices in Benson and Cole, with others not far behind. It whet the appetite.

In conditions made slick by a rain deluge, Barnsley were polished, energetic and showed a bucketful of desire with Rovers outclassed for much of the game.

Last season, Barnsley’s midfield was AWOL for significant periods. They look like they have an engine room again, although it remains to be seen how long Callum Styles is around.

It was Styles’s probing pass which set up Cole, whose steered left-foot finish beat James Belshaw at his near post, a moment that the former Harrogate Town custodian may want to gloss over.

It represented the worst possible start for Rovers and Barnsley sensed their hesitancy and were all over them like a cheap suit in the opening half-hour.

The hosts played the conditions and some of their one-touch play in midfield was a delight.

A lovely Benson sent Cole clear, before the alert Belshaw cleared. But he was soon picking the ball out of his net when a howitzer from Williams took a big deflection and left him rooted to his line on 13 minutes.

It was raining goals in the rain and Belshaw soon had to beat away a Styles piledriver before Cole fired wide as Barnsley wreaked havoc.

Rovers got a slight toehold later on in the half, but it was unquestionably a first half when the visitors got a schooling.

Testament to that came in the fact that a clearly nonplussed Barton made a triple interval change. It did not change the story.

For Duff, the second half was about his side seeing out the job from a defensive sense and also continued to impose themselves on a Rovers backline who looked very susceptible.

The feast continued with Benson continuing his goal flurry with a deadly 25-yarder which whistled past Belshaw.

No more goals, but Barnsley saw the game out comfortably en route to successive home clean sheets for the first time since April 2021.

Barnsley: B Collins; Andersen, Cundy, Kitching; Williams (McCarthy 74), Benson, Connell, Styles; Thomas (Wolfe 74), Cole (Marsh 83), Aitchison (Norwood 62). Substitutes unused: Walton, Oduor, Hondermarck.

Bristol Rovers: Belshaw; Anderson (Kilgour 84), Hoole, Connolly, Gordon (Gibson 45); Finley (Loft 67), Coutts (Whelan 45); Saunders, Evans (Rossiter 45), A Collins; Marquis. Substitutes unused: Jaakkola, Lawrence.

Referee: D Drysdale (Lincs).

Attendance: 9,689 (443 Bristol Rovers fans).