BILLERICAY Town manager Craig Edwards admits he felt sorry for his team after watching them lose 5-0 to Concord Rangers in the Essex Senior Cup final.

The Ryman Premier League side were comprehensively swept aside by the Beach Boys on Monday night, having gone behind early on to a Joe Gardner strike. Town were then reduced to 10 men after captain Richard Halle was dismissed, with Tony Stokes making it 2-0 with only 15 minutes on the clock.

Gardner added another before half-time and despite a Town fight back, in which they hit the woodwork twice, they couldn’t muster a response. Further goals from Danny Glozier and Lewis Taaffe, plus a controversial red card for Ricky Sappleton compounded their misery.

But, while he was pleased with his players’ endeavour, Edwards was far from impressed with the performance of the officials, saying they “ruined” the final.

“The boys ran themselves into the ground and I felt so sorry for them,” he said. “To have them humiliated like that in a cup final was hard.

“The whole night was ruined by the officials. We actually started the game really sharply but they got a goal on the break and we had a man sent off. I can’t complain with the decision to send off Richard, but we had to put our best striker in defence after that.

“I had a bit of a re-shuffle at half-time and we gave it a real go for the first 15 minutes of the second half. We hit the crossbar twice and were the team in the ascendency.

“But the decision to award a penalty was ridiculous. It was outside the box and when that went in it was game over. But Sapps’ sending off was incomprehensible. I spoke to the ref and he said it was because he came through him (Gary Ogilvie) but the linesman said it was an elbow, and the ref changed his mind.

“We have had incredible support from the fans and I am just disappointed we weren’t able to put on a better show.”

Billericay still have one more league game to play before the season ends, as they travel to VCD Athletic on Saturday.