A referee was knocked over when a mass brawl broke out in darkness after floodlight failure in a chaotic FA Cup qualifier.
The match in question was an extra preliminary round replay between Ashford Town Middlesex and Eastbourne Town, the former team progressing with a 3-2 victory after extra-time.
There was no shortage of drama over the two-legged qualifying clash, which saw Eastbourne come back from 2-0 down with stoppage-time equalisers in both games.
But after the South Coast side forced extra-time in the return fixture, the heat was then turned up another notch.
After Ashford took the lead again in the first half of extra-time, the match then came to a standstill in the 115th minute as the match had to be halted due to floodlight failure.
With Ashford’s Robert Parker Stadium just over a mile from Heathrow Airport in a nearby residential area, it’s newly-installed floodlights are not allowed to run after 10:30pm, meaning they instantly turned off towards the end of the game.
What happened to the referee?
That didn’t mean everything else stopped though, as a mass brawl then broke out between the two sets of players in darkness.
And while the action might have been hard for some of the 216-strong crowd to follow, thankfully for us, talkSPORT’s Ian Abrahams, or ‘Moose’, was on hand to capture all of the drama.
In truly bizarre scenes, footage shows the referee being knocked over after getting swept up in the melee between both teams, while the floodlights flicker in the background.
Fans can be heard shouting as they try to identify the culprit, with the lighting making it hard for the referee to work out the instigator.
And after play restarted and Ashford held on to advance, Moose joined talkSPORT to recall his crazy night of FA Cup drama.
He told Paul Hawskbee and Charlie Brooker on Wednesday: “It was one of the most bizarre games we’ve been at.
Moose explained: “The reason why the lights went out is quite a bizarre story.
“These are brand new lights that have been put up at Ashford Town – a club right next to Heathrow Airport. There are three or four clubs in and around the perimeter fence of Heathrow Airport, and Ashford Town is one of them.
“So you’re right by the runway and all night planes are literally taking off 30 seconds apart.
“These brand new lights have gone up, but because it’s a residential area and it’s near the airport, they have to agree that the lights won’t be on after 10:30 at night.”
Moose then explained that the match was plunged into darkness after the referee played seven minutes of injury time in the first half of extra time, taking the game past its 10:30 cut off point.
He continued “What it meant is we went over the 10:30 cut off. So the lights instantly were switched off.
“Nobody in the ground knew why they’d gone off and they were trying to override it.
“The minute the lights went off, there was a free for all in terms of a brawl amongst the players and what seemed like the staff.
“And the referee – I don’t know what he was doing – but he was walking right by the players.
“And as some of the Eastbourne Town players moved away to try and sort of avoid being involved in the brawl, they knocked the referee over.
“But he goes down in his stormers and then seems to grab his ankle like he’s been tackled – it was just hilarious!”
And there could be even more FA Cup drama in store for Ashford soon, as their win means they will now face Kent side Snodland Town in the preliminary round on August 16.