Front-foot approach left Chorley boss Preece proud of his men

Kole Hall scored twice for the visitors but the Iron were too strong for the Magpies, who went down 4-2 in the National League North play-off semi-final.

Goals from Danny Whitehall (2), Callum Roberts and former Magpie Carlton Ubaezuonu did the damage at the Attis Arena.

It means their season ended in disappointment but Victory Park boss Preece was proud of the effort made by his players.

“So close but so far,” Preece told Chorley FC TV. “I don't think the scoreline really reflects the game.

“It was close. I was just saying, you look at the four goals they scored...you get a goal like Carlton's against you probably one every 10 games.

“We make a mistake off a cross...it probably happens one every 10 games.

“When Roberts gets in behind us, it might be offside, it might be a bad decision so you get one of those every 10 games. Or we've switched off; very rarely do we switch off – we might do that in one of every 10 games.

“And the other goal, the lad's got through two challenges – that very rarely happens, again something that might happen once every 10 games.

“It’s happened to us in one game, and a big game and we’ve ended up conceding four goals from it.

“Take that away and there’s absolutely nothing in the game. We've come here, we've scored two goals. I think there's only two other teams that have scored two goals here all season.”

It was Preece’s intention for his part-time team to make a statement in a game where they were the underdogs.

And he felt they did exactly that.

He added: “We've been positive, played two up front, been aggressive, been on the front foot...we just couldn't get that goal to get us back to 3-2.

“Then we conceded and it's 4-1 and you think, 'God, it's gonna be five, six. But the lads have highlighted what we've been all season.

“When the going gets tough and you feel like we’re done and dusted, we come back.

“And we get back to 4-2 and then we have two or three scrambles, opportunities where if that goes in it doesn't matter if there's five minutes left, we're still in the game.

“The biggest respect that we can get is that at that score, 4-2 going into injury time, they're keeping the ball at a corner kick.

“I just wanted us to be positive, not left wondering if we had a go, and we had a go and I couldn't be more proud of the performance.”