HARRY WATTS was left stunned on the sidelines as Dorking were beaten 21-20 at Exmouth in the National League Three play-off on Saturday.
The No 8 star could only watch on in horror, having been shown a yellow card seconds earlier, as the home side won with effectively the last play of the game, snatching promotion from out of the Red & Whites' hands.
He admitted it was "heart-wrenching", saying that he never thought his side were going to lose at any point in the match.
He said: "Throughout that game I didn't doubt us. It was never in my mind that we were going to lose the game, but it happens I suppose.
"I'm gutted. Losing with the last play of the game is heart-wrenching really, particularly as we were leading or most of the game and had been on top.
"It's not a good way to lose, but that is the sport."
Dorking led the way at the top of National League Three London for five months of the campaign, only relinquishing their place at the summit on the penultimate weekend of the season after losing 14-8 at lowly Tring.
And Watts admitted that when it came to the crunch, they just could not see the job through.
He added: "Tring has come back royally to bite us in the backside.
"We've got to pull ourselves together, because it was a great season. We outperformed a lot of other clubs' expectations of what we're capable of. It's just a shame when it came down to the last crucial games of the season we just didn't quite do it, having won some really big, important games and managing to dig deep and getting results when we perhaps didn't quite deserve them.
"We managed to grind out results and everything seemed to be going our way."
But it was not to be and they were made to pay for a second half performance, which yielded just two penalties, having led 14-11 at the break after kicking into a difficult wind.
"I don't know whether we could have used the wind better," Watts said. "In the second half we thought we had the wind behind us so we thought 'let's use that' and perhaps we didn't do it as effectively as we could have.
"In terms of effort you can't fault anyone. Everyone put everything into it, no one left anything on the field, it just didn't happen on the day."
After fifth, third and second place finishes in National League Three London, Watts wants the Big Field outfit to kick on and top the pile in the 2013-14 campaign.
"Let's hope we can make it first place next season," he said. "It's going to be tough, possibly tougher than this year, but we've got the boys to do it."
