Luke Plasted suffered a broken collar-bone as Oxford City Stars crashed to a 10-0 defeat at Telford Tigers in the English Premier League Cup.

Stars were already trailing 9-0 in the third period when Plasted cleared the puck from behind the visitors' goal only to slip and slide head first into the boards.

Play was stopped and Plasted retired to the dressing room where the injury - which will keep him out of action for some time - was diagnosed.

It capped a disastrous day for Stars, who also had Scott Gough harshly sent off.

And there was more misery for Oxford the following day when they went down 4-1 to Milton Keynes Thunder in the English National League Cup.

Oxford were understrength for both games, but they battled hard to keep Telford, who play a level higher up in the National League, at bay until midway through the first period when Ryan Stanton opened the scoring.

Telford, playing with four imports compared with Oxford's two, added further goals in this period through Jared Owen, Karol Jets (2) and Martin Zemla.

It was only the spectacular goalminding of Jamie Thompson which kept the score down.

Things went from bad to worse for Oxford at the start of the second period when Gough checked Tomas Janak as he turned, resulting in the Telford player knocking his chin on the top of the boards as he fell and also hurting his back.

He was stretchered off the ice, while Gough was harshly given a five-plus game penalty for checking from behind and was sent to the changing rooms.

Tigers took advantage of the powerplay, with Joe Miller scoring their sixth.

A holding penalty for Andy Cox gave Telford another powerplay and they used the extra man advantage to score through Jets, assisted by player-coach Claude Dumas.

Stars ended the period 8-0 down when Paul Graham added to Telford's tally.

Oxford held out in the third period until the halfway point when Dumas struck again.

Plasted then suffered his nasty injury, before Telford wrapped up victory when Daniel Croft hit No 10.

Oxford were still missing Gary Slevin, Darren Elliott, Alan Green and Markus Lehmann, as well as Plasted, as they were beaten at Milton Keynes.

This first period ended 0-0, but three goals in just over a minute early in the second session proved Oxford's undoing, with Michael Knights, Ben White and Paul Jamieson doing the damage.

Oxford's efforts were eventually rewarded in the third period when Cox scored following good work by Francis and Nick Eden.

However, a powerplay near the end saw Lee Featherstone seal Milton Keynes's victory with an unassisted goal in the last minute.

Oxford scorers: A Cox 1+0, D Francis 0+1, N Eden 0+1.