Lowestoft Town 0 St Ives 1

Lowestoft Town bowed out of the Southern League Challenge Cup at the first hurdle when they were beaten 1-0 by St Ives at Crown Meadow.
The Trawlerboys, keen to match their run to the semi-finals of the competition last season, were on top for long periods and missed a late penalty as a goal from the visitors after just four minutes proved decisive.
Matt Foy cut between Jack Wilkinson and Rossi Jarvis before drawing keeper Luis Tibbles and cleverly slotting the ball past him at his near post.
Falling behind seemed to spark the hosts into action and Louis McIntosh's corner to the near post saw Malachi Linton rise above the crowd to power in a header that Martin Conway did well to block.
The closest the Trawlerboys came to an equaliser before the break was 10 minutes before the interval when Adam Tann managed to get on the end of an in-swinging Jack Wilkinson free-kick from the right.
But he only succeeded in steering his header from 10 yards straight into the arms of Conway.
Both sides created good opportunities to add to the score in the early stages of the second half.
Only 30 seconds after the restart Ezra Forde's clip into the box from the right was just flicked away from Foy by a stretching Jarvis.
Ives had a huge escape just 60 seconds later as the clearance from the resulting corner was worked down the left with Jacek Zielonka, Jack Wilkinson and Marcus Wilkinson all involved before the latter cut inside and unleashed a fizzing drive from the corner of the box that beat the dive of Conway and crashed into the inside of the post before rebounding across the face of goal at such a fine angle that Linton following up was only able to screw his effort into the side netting.
In 74th minute Linton escaped from his marker in the box and managed to get a clean header onto Wilkinson's clip back into the danger zone but he steered his effort wide from an excellent position.
With two minutes remaining it looked like the hosts were finally going to get the reward of an equaliser as referee decided in favour of the attacking side as the grappling in the area got out of hand.
Substitute Dylan Williams was given the task of despatching the spot-kick which would almost certainly have taken the tie to a shoot-out but Conway guessed right and palmed the effort away.

Attendance: 176

Terry Lynes