NEAL Ardley was left frustrated after Solihull Moors conceded a late goal to draw 1-1 with Maidenhead United to all but end their play-off hopes.
Moors led through Justin Donawa’s 10th minute goal only for Kane Ferdinand to equalise two minutes into injury time at the ARMCO Arena to leave Solihull 11th in the National League.
And with the club nine points outside of the play-offs, with five matches left to play, Ardley is frustrated Moors will likely be without any end of season excitement following their run to the Promotion Final last term.
Ardley said: “I hate getting to this point and there’s nothing to play for, I haven’t had it for three years, the lads need to have that inner drive and inner desire to want to develop and get better.
“The goal was coming, if you really want to, you see the game out and win, the goal came from them breaking on us and we let them.
“It’s offside, the linesman has given offside and the referee has overruled him and said the cross went backwards, how he has a better view than the linesman I don’t know, he was 15-yards outside the box.
“That’s cost us the game but we need to look at what we should have done better, they wanted to equalise more than we wanted to keep the clean sheet, it’s not good enough.
“We went one-nil up and thought we were Real Madrid, we started playing nonsense football strolling around at the back with no tempo and no pace.”
Moors took the lead on 10 minutes when Donawa raced onto Josh Kelly’s pass touched the ball past a Maidenhead defender and placed an effort into the bottom left corner.
And the home side almost doubled their lead when Callum Howe nodded the ball back across goal at a corner only for Mark Beck to hit the post from an extremely tight angle.
Despite an improved performance from Maidenhead in the second half, Moors spurned a golden chance to seal the points when Kelly was superbly denied by Joe Walsh when one-on-one.
However, the visitors rescued a late point when Ferdinand poked home from close range with the goal awarded after the referee consulted with his linesman who had initially flagged for offside.
Moors’ game at Wealdstone on Easter Monday was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.
Solihull are next in action at home to Yeovil Town on Saturday, April 15 with kick-off at 3pm at the ARMCO Arena.
