A man down and a goal behind Devonshire Cougars continued their impressive Premier Division revival beating Somerset Trojans 2-1 at Somerset Cricket Club last night.

The home side, who went ahead through Dion Stovell’s 37th minute penalty, also had a man off in a game that was postponed as Somerset recovered from their CFU Club Championship games in Haiti.

However, Cougars clawed their way back through two unanswered goals from Kwame Steede, the player coach, and Machai Battersbee, to heap more woes on a Trojans side lacking confidence these days.

The victory was Cougars’s fifth straight, which moved them past PHC Zebras into fifth spot in the Premier Division, while Trojans remain in seventh, still five points above the relegation zone but now winless in their last three league games.

Kwame Steede hailed his team’s gutsy display that kept Trojans on the back foot for most of the night. “Our plan was not to give Somerset time on the ball and play fluent, attacking football and enough movement off the ball and it hurt them tonight,” he said.

“Most of the times they won the ball they gave right back to us because we pressed them high up the field. We came up here with a game plan and it worked.”

The only blemish on Cougars’s impressive victory was the sending off of Kioshi Trott, the goalkeeper, who was shown a straight red for denying Leo Burgess a goalscoring opportunity in the first half.

Trojans relinquished their numerical advantage when Coolridge Durham, the midfielder, picked up a second booking for an unnecessary foul on Kwame Steede.

Trojans have gone winless in the league since beating Devonshire Colts 5-3 back in January while Cougars have yet to be beaten this year.

Devonshire Colts can push Trojans closer to the drop zone if they beat PHC on Sunday, while Southampton Rangers will fancy their chances of closing the gap in their game away at North Village.

Meanwhile, Robin Hood kept up their hopes of a trophy this season with a convincing 5-1 win over Hamilton Parish in their FA Cup quarter-final replay at Goose Gosling Field where Lejuan Simmons and Nathan Peskett shared the goals, Simmons completing his hat-trick in the final minute.

Despite missing a few starters Hood were in total control, doing the bulk of their damage in the first half when they scored three goals in twelve minutes.

One of the players coming in, Marcelos Thomas, had a good game in midfield for Hood.

“I changed the shape of our team tonight, we’ve been playing one way all the time so I thought let’s switch it up,” Kyle Lightbourne, the Hood coach, said.

“In the first half I thought we were very good but in the second half we dropped off the pace and allowed them to have a say in the game.

“But we still created chances and in the end Nigel Burgess made four or five good saves. What we worked on in training certainly came out in the game.

“The problem that Parish had was they didn’t know who to mark, our guys were getting in between the fullback and their centre halfs and it was causing them all sorts of problems.

“That’s the way I would really like to play but we haven’t had the personnel to do it.”