Whitchurch Alport’s eight-game winning sequence was halted at the weekend when they were the victims of a cup upset at Yockings Park.

The Macron Cup was a competition manager Luke Goddard wanted to do well in, but after the tie was deadlocked at 1-1 it took penalties to decide the contest with opponents Prestwich Heys proving clinical from 12 yards with five perfectly-executed spot kicks.

And Reds boss Goddard, who heaped praised on the Manchester side, admitted he was disappointed with his side's display on Saturday and felt they had let the club's supporters down.

“We didn’t deserve to go through and Prestwich deserved their victory,” said Goddard.

“We’re just not killing games off and have let leads disappear far too many times this season. We saw this earlier on drawing two and losing four of the first six.

"Obviously, we’ve seen improvement lately but on Monday night (against Squires Gate) and again we’ve only scored one goal and goals are what win you matches, pure and simple.

"We’re not doing that and that will be down to me to keep improving in that area.”

“Over the 90 minutes we’ve drawn the game 1-1 but I don’t believe that had it required extra time, we’d have fared any better and they put five really good penalties away so we wish them well in the next round.”

Goddard insisted the recent struggles in front of goal and two draws, with the penalty loss, on the bounce is not an issue of workrate for Alport.

He added: “You can’t fault the lads for effort and defensively I think we’re fairly tight. Dave (Parton) really hasn’t had too much today but in fairness neither has their keeper.

"When you go in front after four minutes you really hope that you can go on and kill the game off, but we seem incapable of doing that. It’s the supporters I feel sorry for; nearly 250 of them again here today and they should expect better than that.

"Ultimately, this will now give us an opportunity to try and keep our excellent recent league run going and hopefully start another sequence of results that will keep us in the top half of the table.”

There was an injury blow for Goddard with defender Ricky Bridge missing the next six weeks due to a broken hand suffered during Saturday’s cup side. He added: “Ricky has done tremendously well since recovering from an earlier injury and with fellow defender Darren Campion likely to be missing for three matches after his recent sending off that will open the door for others to come and stake their claim to get in the starting line-up. The most important thing though is wishing Ricky well in his recovery.”

nThis coming weekend Alport host Charnock Richard in a Premier Division match. The club will be hosting a Beer Fest at the ground from 11am where there will be a range of real ales available. There will be fun for all the family with a fancy dress Competition, a food challenge, face painting, a carved pumpkin competition, toss the mini-pumpkin, lucky jelly dip and cake sales.