Individual mistakes proved the downfall for St Albans City as they fell to a 4-0 loss away to Maidstone United.

Matt McClure took full advantage of those gifts by bagging a hat-trick with Sam Corne completing the rout 16 minutes from time.

It left manager Ian Allinson just happy to get off the Gallagher Stadium pitch and away from Kent despite the fact that hadn't played too badly in parts.

He said: "We had good spells but didn't punish them and that's been the story of our season so far.

"We had two really good chances at 0-0 and haven't taken them.

"Then totally against the run of play [they've scored] and you think which way do we go?

"And for 20 minutes after that we did very well again. We came back into the game and I felt comfortable.

"We were looking at the watch and thought if we can get in at half-time just 1-0 down we can get back in this game.

"We've then had a situation where Dean has made a mistake, I can't have a go as he's been excellent for us this season, but we're 2-0 down.

"And then it was about building confidence up and we shot ourselves in the foot by overplaying in the wrong areas.

"They defend very strongly and they outmuscled us on occasion.

"It just feels like it all got on top of us. It's disappointing."

Allinson felt part of that problem was a touch of tiredness. The likes of Scott Shulton, Solomon Nwabuokei and Zane Banton have all returned from injuries and all have played a lot of minutes in a short space of time.

The City boss felt that weariness in the legs for those three and others played its part in the outcome, with too much over-playing in the wrong areas.

"Once the sharpness went out of the legs we struggled in the last 15 minutes and I was just happy to get off the pitch with four and not anymore," said Allinson.

"They haven't carved us open massively, they've been clinical in what they've done, but we were our own worse enemy.

"The whole season hasn't been good enough. When we have our good spells we have to punish teams and at the moment we let them off the hook.

"And the goals we gave away were through individual mistakes and not team mistakes."