Gary Brabin suffered his first defeat at U's boss and saw his first player sent off as Kettering out-muscled United to take the points.

Former U's striker Craig Westcarr caught Danny Potter out to put the Blue Square North champions ahead after 50 minutes and Chris Beardsley wrapped up the points with eight minutes left, but between those goals midfielder Ben Farrell was harshly dismissed to leave the injury-hit U's reduced to ten men.

"I was very surprised about the sending-off but at the same time I wasn't shocked," commented Brabin afterwards.

"I thought they were a competitive side from the off. They realise we like to play football and we started getting the ball wide, and the referee kindly gave us free kick after free kick without cautioning any of their players, and then all of a sudden he just started handing yellow cards out to us when I don't think we'd made a foul.

"So when he sent someone off in the end I knew it wasn't going to be our day from a refereeing point of view. I thought it was a harsh decision. I might be wrong, and I'll look at the TV replays, but it looked harsh to me and I'm disappointed with it all.

"I told the lads that we can't hide behind excuses. I know we've got injuries and some of the refereeing decisions, but it's about how we react to this now. We've to pick ourselves up and get back to training and start preparing again for Saturday."

However he admitted that the performance was unsatisfactory even before Farrell's sending off, not helped by the referee's attitude to some of the challenges from Kettering players.

"I told the lads at half-time that we'd done OK but we never got out of first gear, but at the same time I thought Kettering had thrown everything at us and they were trying to stifle us.

"I'm disappointed with their control of the game," he admitted. "We had a few young lads in and I don't know whether it frightens them a bit, constantly getting kicked and not getting any protection, and in the end we didn't deserve anything from the game.

"We knew what to expect from them and I think word is getting round now that we like to play football, and the old British way is 'let's get stuck into them'. I go to all these meetings about what the referees are going to do this year, and I'm still waiting to see it."

But he made it clear that he wants his team to keep playing football and not change their approach to the game: "We can do better than that today and I've told the lads not to hide behind excuses. We've just got to learn from that, be prepared for that and work hard every day. If we keep trying to do the right things I think we'll win more than we'll lose, but today was a bad day at the office.

"Yes it's a defeat and a little knock back, but it's only early days - which is what I was saying when we'd won four out of four - and it'll be nice now to see how we react to that," he concluded.

United's next test is the long journey on Saturday to Weymouth, who are currently in sixth place, just two points behind United, with Alan Lewer and Stephen Reed no doubt keen to get one over on their former club.

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