Smith sorry as Bucks lack fight

Rob Smith gives his players a post-match dressing down on the pitch" class="imageframe alignright" height="130" src="http://www.shropshirestar.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/bucks.jpg" width="175"/>AFC Telford supporters were today offered a public apology from manager Rob Smith after his side's miserable record in knockout football continued.

The Bucks crashed out of the FA Cup in their first game for the second successive year when they were well beaten by UniBond Premier Division outfit Matlock.

Smith and assistant manager Larry Chambers vented their anger at the squad during an impromptu dressing down in the centre circle at the Geoquip Stadium at the end of the second qualifying round tie.

And, despite having 48 hours to digest the defeat, Smith's mood had improved little today as he was left waiting for his first cup victory as Telford manager.

"I spoke to Larry earlier and I said to him that I just can't shrug this defeat off - I'm still very angry," he said.

"We had one reasonable performance out of 11 and that was Chris Cornes.

"They showed no passion and no fight - it was a joke performance and a joke day.

"We didn't put anything we talked about into practice. We wanted to be tight for 30 minutes but we just gave them all the encouragement they needed.

"I'm not sure whether the players believed the hype but on that performance we have gone backwards.

"The supporters have gone a long way to follow us and have paid their money and I apologised to them on the players' behalf because it wasn't good enough."

Smith is expecting to make a glut of changes for tomorrow's Setanta Shield home tie with Solihull Moors.

"We will probably bring five or six players in but we would have done that anyway," he added. "We just need to get back to basics because the lads have done well up until now. I'm not going to go and make widespread changes."