DAVENTRY Town led Newport Pagnell by 2-0 and 3-2 margins despite playing for almost two hours with only 10 men at Willen Road on Tuesday night when superior numbers finally enabled the Swans to advance to the UCL KO Cup final.
In the final Terry Shrieves' men will eventually take on St Ives, Blackstones, Boston Town or Daventry United whose two quarter-finals have yet to go ahead.
With the cup tie only four minutes old Pagnell midfield player Richard
Armstrong was ye
llow carded for elbowing Josh Blake who was in turn shown red for raising his arms in retaliation.
Then the referee is thought to have held up play for six minutes while home goalkeeper James Howarth returned to the changing rooms to pick up a
replacement contact lens.
The Town who also had Josh O'Grady, Ryan Howell, Tom Berwick, Tom James and substitute Adam Confue booked, kept a cleansheet up until half-time before taking the lead through central defender Jason Lee in the 53rd minute.
Lee shot through a crowd of players from a corner by player-coach Paul Lamb, 35, who made a shock return to action after suffering a career-threatening back problem in the early part of the season.
Then Tom Berwick broke away to beat the offside trap and score goal number two in the 70th minute at a time when the Town might have been wiser to shut up shop by taking off a striker and
replacing him with an extra central
defender in Chris Godwin.
Instead the visitors decided to stay on the attack and paid the penalty when Chelley Ngong's 72nd-minute
blockbuster was followed five minutes later by an uncontested headed goal from Armstrong whose name was linked to an early-season move to Daventry.
Extra-time beckoned with the Town's defence looking understandably weary on a night when full-backs O'Grady and Martin Hutchcox both looked out of sorts. Even so hopes were raised again when Berwick restored the Town's lead in the first minute of extra-time with his 39th goal of the campaign.
Two goalkeeping errors by the normally reliable Joe Mellings then gifted goals to the Swans who went ahead for the first and only time through James Fletcher and substitute Vinny Shrieves.
This was a game the Town did not deserve to lose but Newport Pagnell went forward to the League Cup final leaving the Town with only another 18 games to play this season instead of 19.
* In the UCL Premier Division Long Buckby beat Northampton Spencer in a Station Road derby showdown.
A single first-half goal was enough to lift Buckby into the top four.
Top-scorer Dan Holman's effort on the hour proved decisive in settling the result at Station Road as Buckby completed a double over the Millers.
