An own goal and a red card summed up Celtic’s loss at Witton, coming away damp and miserable.

Neither team tore up the turf in the opening twenty-minutes, with the game only getting going when a flying header from Conor O’Grady squirmed past his own keeper to open the scoring. Shell-shocked, it needed a superb flying save from Luke Hewitson to prevent Witton going two ahead as Matthew Lowton cracked in an angled drive. For the remaining twenty minutes, the two teams squelched to the half-time whistle.

The second half-saw Celtic start brightly enough, with Joe Edward’s first touch a scorching volley requiring Dan Roberts to fly across the goal and tip the ball over the bar. Moments after Joe Robbins’s effort barely made Roberts move, calamitous defending gifted a second to Witton as Harry Brazel picked out James Lawrie, completely unmarked at the back post for him to slot in. Craig Hobson returned to Celtic for his third stint and looked to be causing problems for the well-marshalled Witton defence, but eleven minutes after coming on, a two footed tackle saw him dismissed with a straight red, and Celtic never looked like getting anything from the game from that point forward.

A mirror of the second goal, with equally shambolic marking, allowed Joseph Duckworth to put the ball across the face of goal for Connor Hughes to slot in the third.