Romsey Town head coach James Phillips slammed his side’s poor performance after they were beaten 1-0 by Hamble Club Resrves from a league below on Saturday in the Southampton Senior Cup.

The Sydenhams One outfit endured a miserable time against the Hampshire Premier League high-fliers.

And Phillips was not a a forgiving mood.

“It was an extremely poor performance today”, he said.

“Over the past couple of months I’ve almost got used to saying how our performances have been very good and that we’ve been unfortunate in the results that we’ve had.

“But not today, today we got exactly what we deserved.

“Although I brought in five lads today I honestly believed that the side had enough about them to beat Hamble, but I was wrong.

“I said to their management team afterwards that they were the better side and fully deserved their win and that we had no excuses.

“To be honest I feel very, very disappointed as we again had good numbers through the gate supporting the lads and we didn’t deliver a performance for them, let alone a result and that is simply not good enough.

“We’ve received criticism for being naive recently and to a certain extent with a young developing team I can take that.

“But the belief in the philosophy I and the club have didn’t cost us today, it was far too many poor performances individually and then, collectively, that cost us.”

On a pitch that only scraped past an inspection, both teams struggled to get any sort of foothold in the game.

Hamble were far more determined than the Bypass boys, who were looking to put their recent poor league form behind them.

In a first half that saw very few chances created, only Indrit Elezi and Kadeem Price for Town showed any real threat to breaking down a solid Hamble back line.

At the back Town looked uncomfortable with Hamble’s direct forward line and were twice lucky not to concede after failing to deal with direct balls.

After the break the flow of the game continued in Hamble’s favour. There was plenty of endeavour by both sides but very little in the way of chances created or quality of play.

Hamble’s keeper had to react smartly from an effort from Price and tipped over well from Josh Ramsey’s shot from the edge of the box.

With neither side seriously looking like breaking the deadlock, the game went to extra time.

After a dull first period of extra time, the game finally burst into life late on.

With the prospect of penalties looming, both sides pushed for a winner.

Romsey forced a series of corners before Hamble forced a smart save from George Passingham.

With just two minutes remaining Brad Dewick hit the bar for Town.

The subsequent break away saw Hamble pile forward and score the winner to send them through to the next round.

Town have a chance put the disappointment of last Saturday’s Cup exit behind then when they return to Wessex League action tomorrow.

They host New Milton at the Bypass Ground and kick-off is at 3pm.