St Albans City face a dramatic final day of the Vanarama National League South season after taking their “foot off the gas” in the 1-1 draw away to Wealdstone.

Saints led early through Louie Theophanous’ 21st goal of the campaign, and his seventh in the last nine games.

However an own goal late in the first half drew Wealdstone level and they could have gone on and won it after a lacklustre second-half showing from the visitors.

And it was the reaction to losing the lead that was the biggest disappointment for Saints boss Ian Allinson.

He said: “The first 20-25 minutes we were excellent. We were totally on the front foot, took the game to them and could have easily been two or three up.

“Unfortunately we didn’t do that and I felt we took our foot off the gas and let them back into the game.

“We conceded a sloppy goal from our point of view, we should have done better from the free-kick, and I felt they bossed us for the last 50 minutes.

“We did great until we took our foot off the pedal and once you do that it’s very hard to switch back on again no matter what we did.

“We tried the difficult ball, we tried to lump it and our ball retention was poor.”

The result means City head to a last-chance saloon clash with Dartford on Saturday at Clarence Park, with the possibility safety may be in other hands.

Havant & Waterlooville play Truro City on Thursday night and a win for the south coast club would lift them above City, dropping the St Albans back into the mire.

But the City gaffer is still remaining upbeat.

He said: “The positives are we got a point. We’re still in there fighting and if we’d been given a final game against Dartford back in February, we’d have taken that.

“We have to believe others will help us and what we’ve got to do is prepare properly for Saturday.”