‘It’s not good enough’ – Moneyfields suffer shock Wessex League Cup loss on night of three red cards, two penalties and a sin bin at New Milton

A week after being thrashed 5-0 at Bournemouth Poppies in the Hampshire Senior Cup, they were dumped out of the Wessex League Cup by lower division opposition.

In a tie featuring three reds, two penalties and a sin binning, Moneys were shocked 3-2 at New Milton.

Both teams were down to nine men at one stage - Moneys after seeing defender Harry Birmingham sent off late in the first half and skipper Steve Hutchings sin binned shortly after.

New Milton, who had a player sent off for violent conduct against Tom Cain in the melee which followed Birmingham’s dismissal, then saw another one red carded in giving away an 84th minute penalty.

Trailing 3-1 at the time, Hutchings saw his spot-kick saved - his second penalty miss of the campaign - and sub Callum Laycock’s eighth goal of 2022/23 was just another consolation.

‘This was a competition we wanted to win and we’ve fallen at the first hurdle,’ declared Moneys boss Glenn Turnbull. ‘It’s not good enough.

‘A club like Moneyfields should be expecting to get to the semi-finals of a competition like this.

‘They (New Milton) were up for it, they were pumped up, and we weren’t able to match them.

‘I can’t make any excuses, we went as strong as we could.

‘On another night, we could probably have won, but that might have been papering over the cracks.’

Two goals down midway through the first half, Moneys had two penalty shouts turned down for challenges on Dec Seiden.

Regarding the second appeal, Turnbull remarked: ‘The ref said it was ‘normal football contact’.

‘Steve (Hutchings) was sin binned (for his comments to the match official) but he was the captain, he was only asking the question - and it saved me from having to ask it.’

Hutchings brought Moneys back into the tie in the second period when he scored from a Jack Chandler cross.

‘I thought ‘here we go, we’ve got a bit of momentum now’,’ recalled Turnbull. ‘And they literally went down the other end and scored again.’

Cain was penalised for a handball and Milton restored their two-goal lead.

The manager had ‘no qualms’ about Birmingham’s red card - awarded after he first brought down a home player and then landed on top of him.

‘Some of their bench were saying there was a stamp, but that’s not in Harry’s make-up,’ Turnbull remarked.

‘Could he have avoided landing on him? Maybe, I don’t know.

‘I have no qualms about it, the foul in itself could have been a red - it wasn’t dissimilar to Callum McGeorge’s.’

That was a reference to goalkeeper McGeorge being sent off after just two minutes of Moneys’ opening Wessex League game at Horndean at the beginning of the month.

On that occasion, he came out of his area to scythe down Rudi Blankson, earning himself a straight red.