Worksop Town are rocked by ‘no goal’ row in FA Trophy exit at Leek Town

The Tigers thought they had taken the lead when Jay Rollins placed his shot past Daniel Roberts after being played through on goal by Liam Hardy.

However, the Leek goals were a different style to the normal nets used on 3G pitches, and the ball hit a wheel inside the goal and bounced back out, with the referee ruling that the ball had, instead, hit the post.

The decision did not go down well with Worksop and their frustrations were pounced upon by Leek, who quickly established a two-goal advantage with strikes from William Hugill and Thomas Carr.

Liam Hughes halved the deficit in the third minute of stoppage time, but it was too late for Tigers as they were knocked out of the competition. And manager Craig Parry was left frustrated after the early decision. He said: “The opening minute incident completely changes the game; we’ve come away to a side that’s on an 11-game unbeaten run and we’ve scored a legal goal.

“I can’t get my head around how he hasn’t given a goal and it gave them a lift and we’ve collectively lost focus from it as a result and they’ve taken advantage.

“I don’t think we were at our best today.

"But when something so big happens to you like that so early on in the game, we all have to keep calm which includes the players and us as a management team too.

“Taking the incident out the way and like I’ve said it wasn’t a great performance from us. In all honesty, you want to do well in the cups, and everything is a little bit raw at the minute, but I think it’s probably the right thing for us now and refocus on the league."

The Tigers can now focus on league action and with nine games to play in November, it is a chance for Worksop to close the gap on first-placed Stockton Town.

However, with Parry only being able to name 14 players in Saturday’s squad, he hinted at the possibility of some additions.

He added: “We had 14 players in the squad today and one of those was Ben Tomlinson, who is key to our management team. We need to be getting the squad a little bit thicker, get our injured players back and focus on the upcoming schedule.”