I was unable to make the trip to Cray Valley FC for this second round London Senior cup tie but very grateful to First team manager Jim Cooper for sending me his account of the game. Suffice to say I dont think Jim was satisfied with the performance and it is disappointing that we have gone out onjce again to a team lower than us.

`Yet again we lose to a team lower in the football pyramid. This is an unwelcome but all too frequent trait for our club.

It was my first time at Cray Valley and I was very surprised at the excellent facilities that were on offer from the changing rooms to the bar. The pitch was not good but it was no worse than AFC Hornchurch last week so we can have no complaints.

The first half was dominated by us but a combination of poor finishing, woeful deliveries and on occasions one or two good saves from their keeper kept the game level at half time.

The second half started and to be fair, it was much more even. Brad should have scored, Charlie Collins also and Jack Knight headed just wide late on. This was after Ryan James had given us the lead from a set piece.

Cray had their chances, their direct style of play was causing our normally solid back line all sorts of trouble and they had one other very good chance to score and were denied a blatant penalty by the referee who I thought had a good game on the whole.

The games finished 1-1 and we were both left to the lottery of a penalty shoot out. Ryan James, Dean Bown, Charlie Collins and Nikki Ahamed scored which was reciprocated by Cray before Brad blasted his penalty over the bar leaving Cray Valley with the task of finding the net to win which they duly did.

On the whole we should have won the game but fair play to Cray, they put up a very good fight throughout and at the end of the day, whoever wants to win games of football more generally end up doing so.

We will regroup before Saturday's game at Tonbridge Angels knowing that we will need to bounce back and claim the three points to stay in the play off area.`