Harrogate Railway chief Mick O'Connell devastated by play-off semi-final loss to Horbury Town but has 'no complaints' about result

The Starbeck club finished the regular season second in the table, a whopping 26 points ahead of their opponents at the weekend, who ended up in sixth position.

But Gibril Bojang's excellent 19th-minute free-kick proved sufficient to fire the underdogs to victory at Station View.

"It's hard to take, I won't lie, I'm gutted. It'll take me a couple of weeks to get this out of my system, but I am more disappointed for the lads, who have put so much into this season," O'Connell told the Harrogate Advertiser.

"On the balance of play, I reckon we probably deserved a draw after 90 minutes, but overall I can have no complaints, we just didn't do enough to win the game.

"We started poorly. We were miles off it in the first half and they've scored an absolute worldie of a free-kick that I don't think any goalkeeper in football saves.

"Second half, we were much better, but Dan Thirkell's penalty just sums up the last four or five weeks of our season. It hits the bar twice and doesn't go over the line. How often do you see that? It's just so unlucky.

"I think that if that goes in, the way the momentum was going, we'd have ended up winning the game, but it didn't and we couldn't break Horbury down, so all credit to them, I wish them the best of luck in the final."

Railway headed into Saturday's contest missing a number of key members of personnel through injury, but O'Connell said he was loathe to make excuses for his side's defeat.

"Injuries have killed us, but I don't want to hide behind excuses, we just have to take it on the chin," he added.

"The big thing, and I've said this before, is that we had no form to speak of heading into the play-offs.

"Teams that usually do well in play-offs go into them in a good run of form and with a bit of momentum behind them. We didn't have that and I think it showed on Saturday."