I’m not disappointed with the lads at all, their attitudes were bang on. It’s hard enough when you play a top side like that who move the ball well, but I genuinely feel we’ve been undone by the performance of the referee.

I haven’t seen anything like it in all my years in football. Our fans are great and when the ref got the reception he did when he came off at half time you know something is wrong.

Kev (Bastos) has been elbowed in the face and you can hear the contact from our bench.
The ref’s seen it and gives him a yellow card when it is a straight red and no doubts.

They’ve (Hebburn) gone up the other end and Watty’s put a challenge in with a little clip of the feet; we’ve got a man on cover, and he gets a straight red car. You can’t account for that.

The ref’s given us a corner then said the ball didn’t go out of play and he should have given a throw in, then he gives a drop ball to their goalkeeper. The things we were seeing I don’t just understand.

He put three minutes on at the end of the first half and then played five and they scored in the 50th minute, and it is a really bitter pill to swallow as the lads have worked their socks off today.

They covered a lot of ground and I felt that at nil nil it was a really good game. We changed to a back four and we looked really solid again. Watty started the game really well and Sadik (Atcha) started the game really well and at 20 minutes in it looked like it was going to be a great game.

I’m not saying we would have gone on to win as you never know at that point, but I felt we were in the ascendancy, and even with ten men in the first half we had the two best chances.

Brodie’s had one at point blank and the ‘keeper saved it, and then in the second half it was difficult. The only thing that disappoints me today is the second goal from the set piece. Whether you’ve got ten or eleven on the pitch we should have dealt with that better.

I’m certainly not going to moan at our lads about the performance. The last two games the performance wasn’t good enough, but today it was good enough. In different circumstances I’m sure we would have got something from that game.

So, we dust ourselves down, and perspective is important in football. We’ve had some bad results, and everyone thinks it’s doom and gloom, but we are still bang up and around it.

We’ve had a tough run of games and we’ve got to galvanise ourselves.

We’ve got another couple of bodies coming in this week so we’re still working on stuff, and I think we need to say to people that we need to be patient. We’ve got fifteen or sixteen games now.

We’re in and around it and I know we need to improve and as you build a new squad you find teething problems and things aren’t working as you expected them to work.

We are at that point where we are at a crossroads. You’ve seen two (players) come in today.

We know what Brodie’s about, and we’ve seen what Sidik’s about. He’s a very competent player.

So hopefully we can add another two this week and move things round a little bit and we can go and kick on again. I said to the lads not to be down about this one and we’ve got to concentrate on the next one now.