Reading Youth 5 Blackburn Rovers Youth 1: Rovers crashed out of the FA Youth Cup after a disastrous third-round tie at the Madejski Stadium.

Gary Bowyer's side made the perfect start, scoring after just seven minutes, but things went rapidly downhill from that point onwards as Reading cruelly exposed Rovers' vulnerability at set pieces.

"We are bitterly disappointed," said Bowyer.

"On nights like these you find out who can potentially handle situations like this and we learnt a hell of a lot tonight.

"We now need to see who's going to come out fighting after this and in the bigger picture, try and earn themselves a contract."

Things had looked promising for Rovers when Michael O'Connor, who was celebrating his birthday, opened the scoring with a sweet drive from 12 yards out.

But Reading quickly struck back, Simon Church firing home from inside the area following a cross from the right.

Alex Pearce then took advantage of slack marking to score with a powerful header from a corner.

And another corner led to a tap-in for Bignall four minutes into the second half to put Reading 3-1 up.

Bignall grabbed his second of the night midway through the half after a defensive mix-up presented him with a chance he could not miss.

And to complete a miserable night for Rovers, James Henry then added a fifth deep into injury time when his free kick took a wicked deflection off the defensive wall and completely wrong-footed the keeper.