All ploughed up by the Tractor Boys....

Now that wasn't supposed to happen - but didn't you just fear that it would.

Tommy Miller, with the very last kick of the game in the very last moments of injury time, sticks such a pinpoint free kick right into the corner of the onion bag that Wayne Hennessey didn't even move a muscle.

Ipswich striker Jon Walters had stressed the importance of the first 20 minutes yesterday in keeping Wolves quiet - ultimately it was the last 20 seconds which proved decisive.

Talk about not so much as a kick in the teeth but somehow else right where it hurts.

Wolves didn't particularly play brilliantly yesterday, but in situations such as this that doesn't necessarily matter.

They had, thanks once again to Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, nudged themselves in front and within touching distance of the three points that would have kept their play-off hopes very much alive.

Yet the latest in a now long-running saga of last gasp goals at Wolves matches, both for and against, has thrown a right old spanner in the works and left the Molineux men's top six aspirations hanging by a thread.

How quickly the picture can change.

Barely three weeks ago the injury time drama at the Valley, conceding to Leroy Lita and then Karl Henry's incredible winner, propelled a super-confident Wolves into the play-off zone and suggested they were peaking at just the right time.

Now, in the last seven days, they have been on the end of a dreadful refereeing decision which cost them a possible win at Bristol City, been outplayed where it matters in the local derby with the old enemy, and suffered this latest dose of last gasp misery.

So what was the mood like after the game? From the players, dejected but defiant.

Michael Kightly and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, whose thoughts will be aired in tomorrow's Birmingham Mail, both believe Wolves are capable of winning their final three games of the season which will at least give them a fighting chance.

Mick McCarthy, while downbeat, was also equally hopeful, although struggling to find the words to explain why his team should have suffered such an unfortunate injury time fate.

He also seems for the first time to be wondering if it is going to happen for Wolves, admitting that if they don't make the play-offs it won't be through any lack of effort or endeavour.

It is going to be so difficult now. Personally I felt Wolves needed to win against either Bristol City or Albion - they perhaps would have beaten City if referee Paul Taylor had been on his game - but having not done either three points yesterday were paramount.

Should Wolves somehow respond from this cruel setback and beat Cardiff tomorrow night they will at least remain in the mix heading into the penultimate weekend of the season.

Even then a gap of two points to in-form Crystal Palace, with an inferior goal difference, would prove a chunky gap to overhaul bearing in mind play-off specialist Neil Warnock appears to have got Palace, "doing a Palace" at just the right time.

Hope springs eternal, but a fortnight today, it just might be that yesterday's devastating swing of Miller's right boot is viewed as the moment when Wolves' efforts and endeavours were finally subdued once and for all.