During the course of 120 incredible minutes of knockout football at Kingsmeadow on Friday evening, Chelsea took the lead on four separate occasions, but on all but one of them Brighton & Hove Albion managed to hit back and level the scores.

There weren’t too many signs of the relentless match to come during the first 20 minutes, until Diego Moreira gave us the lead with a fine finish. Brighton then equalised from a long kick upfield by their keeper, only for Dujuan Richards put us back ahead before half-time after converting the rebound when his initial penalty was saved.

‘I thought they started really quickly in the first 10 minutes but we withstood that and gradually got into our flow and had a couple of chances,’ said Mark Robinson. ‘Then I thought we took control and thoroughly deserved to go in at half-time with the lead.

‘We were coping with them. Against a side like Brighton who can be very good on the ball, we needed to be good off the ball, and we really were in the first half, as well as playing some good stuff ourselves.

‘We felt comfortable and looked so good in our structure, so the way we conceded the equaliser was unfortunate, to get undone like that. It was disappointing because we’d warned the lads that going direct could be their approach if they were struggling to play out.’

‘So we were disappointed with that but obviously we came out again and went back in front.’

Things initially seemed to go well from there, when Richards curled in to extend our advantage, but then Brighton responded again with two goals of their own, meaning the 90 minutes ended in a 3-3 draw and a further 30 minutes of extra time.

‘At half-time, a lot of the chat was about how Brighton were obviously going to come at us again, which they did for the first 10 minutes, but again we withstood that well.

‘At 3-1 we felt comfortable to be honest. If anything we probably looked like we were going to add a fourth. The second goal really came out of nothing and then the game did swing a little bit again.’

By that time we had already lost Jimi Tauriainen and Leo Castledine to injury following some heavy Brighton challenges, the second of those requiring us to see out the end of the 90 minutes with 10 men, as we had already used our three allowed substitution breaks.

The introduction of Richard Olise for extra time then briefly restored us to 11, before a horrible high foot from the Brighton goalkeeper – which somehow went unpunished by the officials - forced Michael Golding off, with no one left on the bench to replace him.

Combined with the fact we had again taken the lead, through Jimmy-Jay Morgan, only for the Seagulls to hit straight back again, it was a match which became as exhausting mentally as it was physically.

However, that made it all the more impressive when we finally struck the decisive blow, Zain Silcott-Duberry brilliantly chipping the keeper from a long way out with just three minutes of extra time remaining.

‘I thought we looked a little bit deflated at 3-3 after 90 minutes and they had a lot more experience than us on the night. So the team-talk before extra time was really important, because mentally I thought we looked a little bit beaten. The lads reacted to that well, but then we had the other issues of players coming off injured.

‘Fortunately, we put five outfield players on the bench, because the way it turned out we would have gone down to nine men instead of 10. I never like to talk about decisions but I felt the boys had to overcome quite a bit, there were a couple of times when I felt Brighton were very lucky to keep 11 players on the pitch.

‘The boys had to deal with that and the players having to go off injured because of that affected the team as well. It was emotionally quite difficult for the boys, and even us on the bench. Mentally it became a real challenge for the boys, which it was really pleasing to see them overcome.

‘Plus at 4-3 we thought we’d done it, but they went straight up the other end and scored. So there was quite a lot to deal with on the night, and to come through all that and get the winner in the fashion we did with 10 men was great.’