Ashington lose ten goal thriller in FA Vase

In one of the most unbelievable of games ever staged at Woodhorn Lane, the home side led on two occasions at 1-0 and 4-3 before the plucky visitors came back to equalise then score twice in the final quarter hour.

Skinner said: “First of all congratulations to Billingham Town. From a personal perspective if there’s a crumb of comfort to take from today, I hope the late Gary Pearson wherever he may be – who had been appointed as the Billingham manager before his sudden passing – has got a smile on his face knowing that his Billingham Town team have come to Ashington and won 6-4 because I got on well with Gary and my condolences go to his family.”

The boss was not happy from the kick off: “I wasn’t pleased with how we began the game,” he said, “In the first ten seconds, we made about three passes which were really slow, really sloppy and really under hit and that set the tone for the start of the game but then after four minutes we found ourselves one nil up and you think ‘hopefully that will settle us down and we’ll go on to have a better performance.’

"To Billingham’s credit they came back at us and to be fair I don’t know if there were any defences on the pitch in the first half because it ended up 4-3 at half time!

"However, one of the key moments for me was right on the interval where again following a good little move, we got Robbie Dale in and the ‘keeper (Jordan Harkess) has made a good save. If we had come in at half time 5-3, it might have been a different tale – but it wasn’t to be.

He continued: “Maybes you wonder ‘was it meant not to be our day?’ I think when they went 5-4 up, it’s a strike where everybody thinks it’s going wide and it cannons off the inside of the post and flies into the other side of the net - and even the lad who struck it (Ben Heeley) didn’t even realise it had gone in!

"We can look back on hundred of things but what we can’t do is change the result so we wish Billingham Town all the best for the rest of the competition.”

Skinner went on: “I said earlier in the season that we needed to be careful in terms of the goals we were conceding and about turning situations around – like coming from 2-0 down to win 3-2 . At the time it was great but I mentioned that there would come a point where it wouldn’t happen and unfortunately we chose the wrong day – and probably one of the worst days – for that to occur.

"But we have to dust ourselves down and go again and channel a bit of our disappointment about how we feel and use that to really spur us on in the other competitions we are still in.

"Defensively, we‘ve had some issues this season in terms of injuries and unavailability - but that’s not an excuse and I don’t want to take anything away from Billingham because if you score six goals away from home, I think you deserve to win a game of football.”