'Frustrated and disappointed' - Ashington boss Marc Ellison reacts to FA Cup exit

Ashington manager Marc Ellison said he was left “frustrated and disappointed” after watching his outfit bow tamely out of the FA Cup following a 3-2 defeat against Thornaby on Saturday.

The Colliers led on two occasions in the preliminary round clash, courtesy of Jamie Holmes and Craig Spooner, but the Teessiders replied with a controversial Spencer Walker penalty and Jacob Thompson header before Walker scored an eventual winner.

Speaking afterwards, Ellison said: “I’m frustrated and disappointed – that’s probably the best way to describe how I feel after this afternoon. I thought in the first half we looked really comfortable again. Then we get another horrendous refereeing decision to award them a penalty. I don’t even think anyone claimed for it – and he [the referee] must’ve been the only person in the ground who thought it was one. I said last week that we can’t control decisions like that, but that said, it’s not the reason we lost the game as we went back ahead, so it’s no excuse.”

The Ashington boss continued: “At half-time, the message was pretty much more of the same; relax in the final third, up the tempo a little bit, and I was confident we’d have a good second half. But the goals we gave away are so poor. A free header from a corner inside the first 30 seconds, and then, if I’m being brutally honest, we just went through the motions. Things didn’t go our way as we’d hoped, but we didn’t roll our sleeves up and put it right. I think it took us until the last five minutes of the game to actually look like we wanted to go and score a goal, get something from the game and play with any real urgency.”

He added: “I can’t quite put my finger on what it is at the moment, as the game has only just finished. Maybe it’s a lack of leaders, maybe it’s confidence, maybe it’s concentration - I’m not sure. But the difference between the first half and the second half is worlds apart.

“And, to be fair, we weren’t exactly at our free-flowing best in the first half either. But we looked comfortable, we looked a threat going forward and we looked like we could cause them problems. Second half, I don’t really know what to say about it - probably the less said, the better.”