Hylton convinced his strike should have stood

Danny Hylton's goal was disallowed for offside

Midway through the second period, the forward raced on to a lovely pass from Andrew Shinnie and rifled his effort beyond Freddie Woodman, sending both himself and 7,500 Luton fans into raptures, thinking they had reduced the deficit to 3-2.

Hylton celebrated wildly, and the St James’s Park PA announcer even thought it was a fair strike too, only for an offside flag to ensure the joy was short-lived, with referee Neil Swarbrick disallowing the goal, the news eventually filtering through to Town's frontman.

However, Town’s top scorer said: “It was a great little one two with Shinnie and in my mind there was no doubt about it, it’s probably why I went off and celebrated.

“I scored, I never thought it was offside in a million years, I’ve seen the replay back and it wasn’t.

“But sometimes decisions go against you and they did today.

“It was nice to see it go in, and if that had counted, with half an hour, 20 minutes, I don’t know how long to go, then you never know, but ifs and buts.”

Town boss Nathan Jones was also naturally frustrated to see what on the replay appears a perfectly good goal chalked out, as he said: “It’s onside, we’ve looked at it, so that’s the big disappointment, because at 3-2, you never know.

“They’ve got the quality still to score again, but so have we and we had a real late opportunity with Gambo (Luke Gambin), hit the bar with Elliot Lee, so it’s difficult.”

Skipper Johnny Mullins added: “It was disappointing, I don’t think he celebrated much either!

“Then Gambo has a chance late on, it’s all ifs, buts, they’re a quality side, it’s brilliant to come up against them, pit our wits.

“It was difficult, especially in that 10 minutes period in the first half, but on a whole apart from that, we dealt with them well.”