Ilkley Town 0 Carlton Athletic 2

RED cards for Matty Whitehead and Danny Bott capped off a frustrating day for Ilkley, as they were knocked out of the West Yorkshire League Cup.

In a frantic start, Carlton almost took the lead after four minutes. Alex Haigh's flick sent Scott Burns free down the right wing, before he crossed low into the box.

Anees Younis was there, but somehow scuffed the ball wide from close range.

One minute later Ilkley almost had the lead after a game of head tennis broke out in the box. Dan Chadwick got the final touch but his header cannoned back off the bar.

Fifteen minutes in and Ilkley almost fell behind in bizarre circumstances. A corner was met by Kris Robertshaw who guided the ball towards goal, only for his header to be cleared off the line.

He was adamant it had crossed and from the ensuing corner it was same process, same result.

Chadwick's corner found Robertshaw who headed towards goal where it was again cleared off the line. Further protests broke out that it was a goal, but the referee wasn't interested.

Carlton did eventually take the lead, when Burns pinged the ball in-field to Ben Bodle. The midfielder then produced a sublime effort to find the bottom corner from 25 yards.

Town began to sit back but should have equalised after 37 minutes. Robertshaw's under hit backpass put Toby Harris one-on-one with the keeper.

Harris took the wrong decision as he tried to go round Jonathan Gardiner, who got down well to pluck the ball from his feet.

As the whistle went to end a fantastic first half, Ilkley knew they needed to keep their heads to turn it around after the break.

Town came out fighting and nearly levelled eight minutes in, as Conor Bransfield's ball gave Harris another run at Gardiner.

This time the forward took the ball around the scrambling keeper, but his cross into the box was poor, straight into Gardiner's gloves.

The game would eventually unravel for Town, when Whitehead saw a straight red after clattering through Younis to deny him a one-on-one shot at James Hirst.

The tackle was a desperate effort to keep Ilkley in the tie, but it would prove pointless, as Younis himself stepped up to take the free-kick and curled it into the top corner.

Carlton knew it was game over, and would keep the ball well until the end. There was just enough time for Ilkley captain Bott to see red, after an ugly kick to the shin of Haigh. Fortunately, the Carlton forward was uninjured, but very shaken.

Manager Simon Armstrong believed Ilkley were well in the game before the dismissals. He said: "We had a game plan which the lads executed reasonably well, nullifying them in certain areas like we wanted to do.

"We missed two or three really good opportunities before the red cards and they obviously change the game.

"But credit to the players they didn't stop working for the full 90 minutes."