The Supporters Club is not in the business of making ultimatums. It’s not cricket, as they say. But if both managers don’t spend the next week’s training sessions working on avoiding last-minute corners, we are withholding all funding for the next ten years. Our blood pressure can’t take it.

Yesterday, the men put a dampener on a few hundred Saturday nights by failing to keep out a corner deep into injury time, denying themselves a deserved point.

Here, the women came close to repeating the unwanted feat. The first Ipswich injury-time corner grazed a Rooks head and deflected narrowly over the bar. The second corner saw an effort smack off the post, the third or fourth time they had rattled the metalwork during the game.

If that makes it sound like the Rooks were lucky to escape with a point, we genuinely were not. This was a superb performance against a side who are duking it out with Hashtag for automatic promotion. We rode our luck a bit at the end, yes, but we matched them for the previous 90 minutes.

The defence was largely solid, throwing their bodies in the way of everything and not letting Ipswich settle on the ball. Paula Howells was her industrious best, chasing down the keeper at every opportunity and trying her trademark long-range howitzers when the opportunity arose. But Lois Roche was the pick of the bunch for me, playing further forward than she normally does, but giving the Ipswich back line headaches every time she got on the ball.

The visitors took the lead midway through the first half. A free-kick from out right was whipped across the face of our goal, and the very impressive Natasha Thomas flicked it in to give them a lead.

We took a scrape of paint off the goalposts too shortly afterwards, when Ipswich fluffed a pass out from the back and Carpenter let fly from range, the ball smacking off the joint of bar and post.

The equaliser was a top-quality move. Roche burst forward down the right and released the ball for Lucy Connolly-Brame. She didn’t rush it, getting her feet straight before poking the ball low into the bottom corner, beating Negri in the Ipswich goal.

The late drama aside, it was a terrific performance from the Rooks, night and day better than what we saw in the early part of the season. It’s a huge credit to Nat, her staff and the team that they’ve progressed this far. Let’s see if they can do it again on Wednesday night, when the other title contenders, Hashtag, arrive at The Pan.

Lewes: Moore, Brant, Schreimaier, Glass-Oliver, Godfrey, Proctor, Carpenter (Bacon), Howells, Connolly-Brame, Roche (Ginger), Lane (Fatuga-Dada)

Unused subs: Hunkin, Eze, Gilligan

Supporters Club player of the match: As previously stated, Lois Roche had a belter