GARY Middleton felt that Ashington’s hopes of causing an FA Cup upset against Grimsby Town suffered a huge dent after conceding a goal after just four minutes.

Indeed, the early strike from Rob Duffy, who netted after an error from Karl Dryden, eased the nerves of a restless crowd at the crisis club who have slipped down the divisions and find themselves at the wrong end of the Blue Square Bet Premier Division.

Grimsby had lost their last three league matches but were made to work for their victory against one of the smallest teams left in the competition.

And while the 5-0 scoreline does not reflect the Colliers’ brave performance, Ashington still created plenty of chances and passed the ball around neatly for the entire 90 minutes.

Middleton told the Journal: “We wanted to keep a clean sheet for as long as possible in order to frustrate them, but a mistake by the goalkeeper hasn’t helped that.

“But I thought we had a good spell for 20 or 25 minutes after that where we looked decent.

“The two goals five minutes before half-time sort of killed us. We came off at half-time and didn’t want it to be six or seven but I thought we gave a good account in the second half.

“We found it hard to defend against them and created three or four half chances which on another day might have gone in.” The damage was done in a weak eight-minute spell for Ashington just before the break when Liam Hearn weaved his way into the box and, after seeing his first shot blocked by a the recovering Colliers back line, he patiently waited before curling a neat right-footed shot past Dryden to make it 2-0 on 37 minutes.

Hearn grabbed his second two minutes later with another right footed effort to make it 3-0 at half-time.