Reaction from Stamford AFC manager Graham Drury after their 5-0 defeat at Spalding United

Stamford boss Graham Drury offered an apology to the club's fans after their derby day mauling by neighbours Spalding United.

The Daniels went down to a 5-0 away reversal against their rivals in the Southern League Premier Division clash.

The defeat knocked Stamford out of the play-off places with Harborough moving into the all-important fifth spot with one match of the campaign remaining.

Drury said: "You have to give credit to Spalding because they've obviously whipped us open and I can only apologise to the fans for that.

"I felt my players died a little bit and I told them that they had let their fans down because the one thing that you don't want to do in a local derby is get thumped like that.

"They travel up and down the country to support us and I felt part of that in letting them down.

"The embarrassment of going 3-0 down was then compounded into being four and then five because our desire to get behind the ball just disappeared and we just collapsed.

"We weren't thinking about anything else apart from trying to nick a goal and our build-up play wasn't good enough to do that.

"All of the plans went out of the window because the lads didn't do their jobs properly and it was a comedy of errors.

"At the end of the day, we haven't been good enough and Spalding were so credit to them. It was a bad day for us."

Stamford had only trailed to a Dan Lawlor penalty at half-time before starting well after the break.

Ashton Offler hit the crossbar with a header but, once James Clifton had doubled Spalding's lead, the Tulips ran away with the contest.

Joe Nyahwema netted twice in between a goal from Jack Roberts as Stamford suffered their heaviest defeat of the campaign.

Drury added: "We had to try and recover from the penalty and we stayed in the half.

"I was quite happy to put the same 11 out for the second half because I thought we was in the game.

"There was no panic in the dressing room from us and I asked the players to go out and be brave and really put some pressure on them.

"If the header against the crossbar had gone in, it might have been different but we never really recovered from the two mistakes for the second and third goals and the game is done at 3-0.

"We played it like it was a local derby for seven minutes and I don't know where the remaining 90 were.

"I don't think we were composed on the ball enough and we lost the battle in the middle of the pitch."

Stamford now need to beat fourth-placed Halesowen Town in their final match of the season on Saturday and hope Harborough drop points at AFC Sudbury in order to finish in the top five.

However, Stamford's record against the top teams in the division this season has been their undoing in their play-off push.

Drury said: "We haven't beaten one of the quality sides yet this season and we are not in that group yet because they haven't been able to do it.

"Saturday could be a very good time to start doing that but the dressing room has got to prove they're good enough to do it.

"There is still a glimmer of hope going into the last game and we've got to try and dust ourselves down to do our job and hope the other results go in our favour.

"We've got to lick our wounds and go into a game in front of a really big crowd."