Sidmouth Town were involved in an extraordinary game when they visited Bovey Tracey to contest three league points.

The Vikings played against nine men for 63 minutes after Bovey Tracey lost one player to bad language directed to the match official and another for dangerous play!

Despite being two men short, the home side found themselves 3-1 up with just five minutes of the match to play, and trooped off the pitch beaten 4-3!

Town boss Josh Stunell said: “I have been in the game for some time, but I cannot ever recall a game quite as strange as this one. For much of the game we were poor and well below the levels we have shown in recent games – and indeed what I expect from this group of players.”

He continued: “It was very hard for me at the end because, when your team has just come from behind to win in such fashion you want to praise the players, but in all honesty this was a woeful. We lacked both intensity and work rate in a woeful all-round show and we can – and will – do better.”

Town fell behind in the early exchanges, but, within a minute were level with Tyler Wellman drilling the ball home from the edge of the area.

The home team then lost two of their number and yet Town fell 2-1 and then 3-1 down with both goals down to individual mistakes.

With four minutes of normal time to play Connor Swingler was felled in the box and Ben Farrington scored the resultant penalty.

Dan Norman then came off the bench to level things up and then, in the one and only minute of added time Sean Densham headed the winner at the far post.

Stunell said: “With 15 minutes to go I was in despair. We must have had 30 attempts to the three they had managed. For me the clock was clearly ticking and I genuinely wondered where on earth we’d go from this one if we lost to a 9-man side.

“Then the footballing gods delivered, we got the spot kick and quickly levelled.

“At 3-3 there was no thought of shut up shop and take the point. No, quite the opposite as we went straight back up their end to get a winner and duly got it!”

Despite the below-par show, the bottom line is that Town have now won three successive matches, scoring 14 goals in the process and that has seen confidence levels rise considerably at Manstone Lane.

This Saturday they are on the road again with a visit to a Torridgeside outfit that are big scorers themselves and netted five on their visit to East Devon earlier in the season.

Stunell says of the trip to North Devon: 2They [Torridgeside] have been scoring goals for fun and we have begun to fine the net on a regular basis so we ought to see a goal fest at Torridgeside on Saturday afternoon.”