WHEN the members of Highworth Town’s heroic FA Vase squad sit down to tell the tale of how they came within a whisker of a Wembley final, John Fisher is certain that his players will spin a yarn without an ounce of regret.

The Worthians dreams of running out at the home of English football dissipated at the final hurdle as they were unable to overcome North Shields in the North East on Saturday, with Fisher’s men eventually beaten 3-0 on aggregate in the semi-finals.

But Saturday’s 2-0 second leg scoreline, courtesy of strikes from Gareth Bainbridge and Dean Holmes, fails to convey just how alive and kicking Highworth’s efforts were at ‘The Morgue’, with the Hellenic League hopefuls giving a spirited account of themselves before succumbing to two second half goals.

There were tears at the final whistle as Shields toasted a dream day at Wembley with their supporters but the Worthians had nonetheless earned every echo of applause that came their way as they departed the field.

“They’ve done themselves proud and they’ve done the club proud,” said Highworth manager Fisher.

“What did we say? ‘Don’t have any regrets’. And none of them can walk off with any regrets.

“That’s all we could have asked. To come up to North Shields and compete; it wasn’t a 2-0 (losing performance) because we were pushing to get another goal back.

“My boys are distraught and they were crying. They’ve given everything they can for me and the club, and they’ve done themselves proud.

“It’s just disappointing when you get so far but that’s football. You’ve got to take the knocks. We do it because we love it.

“Let’s be fair; we all wanted to go to Wembley, didn’t we? But it wasn’t to be.

“When they look back in a few weeks it will be that the dream is gone.

“They’re hurting. Grown men were crying and I can understand because I felt like crying.

“I’m just distraught for the lads. They gave it their best shot, they can’t walk away with any regrets and I’m glad they haven’t got any.”

Despite their opponents’ 1-0 lead heading into the weekend’s second leg, Highworth coped with the occasion far better for the best part of an hour.

With the game goalless, fate cruelly denied the visitors a goal that would have levelled the tie in the second half when Ryan King’s whipped free-kick curled onto the angle of post and bar before bouncing downwards.

The Worthians players were up in arms, claiming that the ball had crossed the line, but the officials didn’t agree and their big opportunity was gone.

But Fisher was philosophical over the goal that never was.

He said: “They say it was in but that’s history now. We can’t keep talking about ‘was it in or wasn’t it in?’ because, according to the referee, it wasn’t in.

“I thought we gave a great account of ourselves again.

“We were pushing to get that goal back, we defended excellently first half against the wind and we had some chances.

“We went in at half-time and to be quite truthful, I was confident that we’d go on to win it. The lads were confident that we’d go on to win it.

“They hardly shot at all and we said to them: ‘as soon as you can, pull the trigger’. And a couple of chances went quite close.

“They’re going to be disappointed because they felt that they’d done enough in the first half to go on and win it second.

“To get knocked out of the semi-final is tough.

“People will say how well you’ve done to get that far, and that’s right, but it’s irrelevant to me at the moment. I’ll look back and think ‘it was a great run’ but I’m so disappointed for the boys.”