Ipswich had won four of their previous five games to revive their play-off hopes in Division One and were not about to soft-pedal when Morecambe, from the Nationwide Conference, came calling yesterday.

Any dreams of a shock upset were laid to rest as early as the second minute when Joe Royle's men went in front and they finished off the opposition with three more strikes in a 12-minute spree in the second period. It was the second time in three years the sides had met in the Cup. On the first occasion Ipswich came away with a 3-0 win and this time, with home advantage, they went one better.

There was an element of role reversal as the teams took the field. One of them were a well-run outfit of full-time professionals riding high in the table with money in the bank. The other side were more than £30 million in debt and had been forced 24 hours earlier to make 18 administrative staff redundant. Enter Morecambe and Ipswich, in that order.

Whatever the relative solvency of the clubs involved, the hosts instantly pulled rank on their visitors from three levels below, taking the lead after just 69 seconds. Iain Swan, under pressure from Marcus Bent, failed to clear decisively and Jamie Clapham's first-time left-foot volley from 20 yards caught goalkeeper Craig Mawson on his heels.

Nevertheless Morecambe raised their spirits sufficiently to mount a stirring counter-attack, Andy Marshall's outstretched legs blocking Danny Carlton's shot before the Ipswich keeper then threw himself to his left to tip away Lee Elam's fierce follow-up.

Sadly for the non-Leaguers, their outlook became bleaker after 19 minutes when Bent's lofted pass put Pablo Counago free only for centre-back James Bentley to wrestle the Spaniard to the ground. Bentley's intervention was a blatant denial of a goal scoring opportunity and the resulting red card was inevitable.

Morecambe manager Jimmy Harvey, who assists Northern Ireland Sammy McIlroy on the coaching front, quickly reshuffled his line-up with two substitutions and one of them, Neil Uberschar, was called on to make a goal-line clearance from a header by Hermann Hreidarsson following a corner as half-time approached.

Ipswich nearly made a similarly explosive start to the second half, Richard Naylor's header rebounding back off the bar after Bent had flicked on a cross from Darren Ambrose.

Far from slinking back into their shells, the Shrimps, as the club from the Lancashire coast are known, once again responded pluckily. Their captain, Stewart Drummond, in fact, slipped a perfectly weighted ball through to Adriano Rigoglioso but his angled finish was well off the mark. If evidence was required why the striker, once a team-mate of Michael Owen in Liverpool's youth team, had not made it on to the Premiership stage, here it unfolded.

Rigoglioso was taken off shortly afterwards as Morecambe were forced further and further on to the back foot. By then Ipswich substitute Darren Bent had raced on to Ambrose' s throughball to net No 2. Ten minutes later, the outstanding Ambrose cut in smartly from the left before unleashing a right-foot effort that Mawson was powerless to prevent curling inside the far post. Darren Bent then added his second almost immediately, this time a simple tap-in from a Matt Holland cross.

Daily Telegraph