Nine-man Blues go out of Premier Cup after Stowmarket defeat

The Blues, a mixture of U18 and U23 players, were beaten 1-3 and ended the game with just nine men, after both Brooklyn Kabongolo and Tete Yengi saw red.

Isthmian North Stowmarket Town are flying high in their Step 4 league and had to come from a goal behind to beat Town, in front of a crowd of 440.

Ipswich took the lead when Callum Page picked up the ball from a throw-in and carved through Stow’s defences to fire his shot into the net.

However, the home side's patience paid off in the 38th minute when goalkeeper Antoni Bort spilled a save and Evan Collard pounced to level things up at the break.

Stowmarket Town boss Paul Musgrove, guided his side to victory over Town's youngsters. (Image: ©2012 Gary Donnison Photography)

With the match finely balanced, there was a key moment in the game when Ipswich defender Kabongolo picked up a yellow for kicking the ball away, which came back to haunt him nine minutes later, getting his second yellow for a foul.

Stowmarket needed no further invitation and pressed home their advantage which came from a former Town player, Chris Casement, whose long-range effort sailed through a packed goalmouth and into the net.

The third came when Josh Mayhew’s shot was parried up in the air and Willie Clemons seized the gift bundling the ball and himself into the goal.

Ipswich ended the game with nine men, Yengi sent off following a melee in the dying stages of the match.

Adem Atay, who was in charge of the Ipswich Town side, cited their lack of discipline as well as not being clinical enough in both boxes for their defeat.

He said: “The game started reasonably well for us and we felt we were in control and deserved our goal and then it was unfortunately a catalogue of mistakes – we don’t take our chances in the penalty box and we don’t defend our penalty box very well, so we end up the receiving end of a bad scoreline.

“We lacked discipline throughout to do the right things over again and the discipline with our behaviours and we have ended up losing two players and going down to nine men.”

Stowmarket manager Paul Musgrove admitted his side had struggled to get a foothold in the game early on.

“We started quite slowly and it probably took us 25 minutes to get to grips with their shape and their movement. Once we had done that and our communication was better and people went with runners we really stepped on to them and showed we had good senior players who took control of the game.”