KEITH Wilson was left despondent after his Heybridge Swifts side crashed out of the Essex Senior Cup.

They lost 3-1 against visiting Waltham Abbey in round three of the competition on Tuesday night, with their only goal coming from Charlie Gregory.

The result followed hard on the heels of Saturday’s 4-2 defeat at the hands of Ware in Ryman One North.

Wilson must now regroup ahead of this weekend’s trip to Ryman One South side South Park in the first qualifying round of the FA Trophy.

Wilson, speaking about the Waltham Abbey defeat, said: “I am a bit despondent to tell you the truth.

“We scored to pull a goal back at the end to make it 2-1, we are chasing the game and they go back down the other end and score a goal.

“We played really well and just through two mistakes they score.

“I got a great reaction from the players after Saturday and there were some really good individual performances.

“We created good chances but just didn’t take them.

“This defeat was a hard one to take.

“We had a couple of players missing through injury but those who came in did really well.

“I’ll go away, think about and take the positives for Saturday.”

Looking ahead to Saturday’s FA Trophy game Wilson said: “I wasn’t going to risk anyone with niggles on Tuesday night with an eye on the South Park game.

“I kept Neil Richmond and Danny Barber out.

“We had South Park watched on Tuesday night and Andy Tomlinson has a friend at Thamesmead and they played them earlier in the season.

“By the time we go there on Saturday we will know how they line-up.

“There’s was a league game on Tuesday night, which is their bread and butter, so they should have had a similar team out to that on Saturday.

“I don’t know if they had us watched on Tuesday but we should have four or five changes from that side so it may work in our favour.”