Beeston AFC 0–2 Sussex Athletic

The first half was going about as well as Beeston could have hoped. Nobody was kidding themselves it was pretty, but against a side one point behind them in the table, solidity was the plan and the plan was holding. The earlier meeting between these two had finished 1–1, and this looked like a companion piece in the making.

Then, at 41 minutes, Marco Sequeiros received a straight red card, and the evening changed shape. Look, Sequeiros has been involved in goals lately, a scorer against Marlborough, a provider against Mancunia and Kirkby. Tonight he provided something else entirely. Forty-nine minutes is a very long time to spend outnumbered. It is roughly the length of a moderately boring film, and Beeston had to sit through the interval knowing exactly which film they were in.

To their credit, the ten men reached half-time level. That was the good news. The bad news was that the second half still had to be played.

Sussex made the extra man tell without turning it into a parade. The breakthrough arrived in the 66th minute, Gruffydd Conway-Hughes finishing from open play after Nicolò Consalvi had done the patient, irritating work that goals like that depend on. A goal was always coming once Beeston's legs started asking questions their brains couldn't answer. The second, in the 76th, was Arthur Grasmere's, set up by Norberto Ríos-Calvo, and it was the sort of finish that kills the argument stone dead. At 2–0 with fourteen minutes left, the only remaining drama was the arithmetic.

And the arithmetic is not kind. Sussex Athletic, off the back of a win and now two in a row, leapfrog Beeston into 10th. Beeston, on a losing run that is short but very real, drop to 11th.

Tomorrow is Matchday 39. That is the nature of this league: no time to sit and feel sorry for yourselves, which is probably just as well for Beeston. The alternative is forty-nine minutes of replaying it, and nobody needs that.