St Albans City bowed out of the Herts Charity Cup with a 4-3 penalty shoot-out defeat to Hemel Hampstead Town but following on from an improved performance on Saturday this was another game to please manager Ian Allinson.

Albert Adu had scored twice on his return for injury and Saints led 2-1 going into the final two minutes before Liam Nash fired in a wonderful free-kick to take the tie directly to the shoot-out.

Tom Bender, Darren Foxley and Scott Shulton all scored but misses from Andronicos Georgiou and Zane Banton meant Hemel advanced.

However, the boss was focused more on the effort shown, something that has been a long time in coming.

He said: "We certainly created a few more chances than of late. It was a good performance and it was a good game to be fair for a Herts Charity Cup.

"I felt we deserved a victory but overall I'm pleased with the performance. It's something we have been striving for over the last few weeks and we have to learn from it now.

"We have to take that forward, we have to grab what we've done, all the good things, and take that to Welling on Saturday.

"I've said all along that we have decent players but we haven't put it together as a group.

"Tonight we got that but we have to go and fight like that in every game. We can't just do it because it's a derby with Hemel. We have to do that in every game.

"We have to make the opposition earn the right to beat us."

There was also praise for David Longe-King who after being left out against Bath put in a performance that was "the best I've seen from him this year" according to the boss.

"We've got competition for places," said Allinson. "David now knows he has to fight for his place and that was the player I watched last year and that was the player that was selected for England C by the end of the season."