RADCLIFFE Borough go into Saturday’s home clash against Curzon Ashton on the back of a stark reality check in midweek which saw them thrashed 7-0 at home by Colwyn Bay.

Director of football Gerry Luczka warned the Boro faithful not to get carried away after the Stainton Park men got off to their best start to a season for years with four wins in the first five matches, and how right he was.

The UniBond Division One North drubbing took the gloss off Saturday’s FA Cup preliminary round win at Atherton Collieries where Steve Howson notched the only goal of the game to send the men in blue through.

Luczka said after Tuesday’s defeat: “At the end of the day you’ve got to put things into perspective. It’s one defeat out of six matches.

“We just had a bad day at the office. I thought they were the best side we’ve played this season.

“We had the backlash from their defeat against St Helens on Saturday. They got beaten in the FA Cup by a Vodkat North West Counties league side and they will not have like it.

“Having said that, we should never have conceded seven goals against that lot, particularly when you consider that we had only conceded two goals in five matches.

“It’s very disappointing, but it’s just one game. We have to be philosophical about things. We’ve got to dust ourselves down and we’ve got to go again on Saturday.

“It’s a long hard season and just as it would have been wrong to get carried away by the good start to the season last week, it’s not the end of the world because we have had a bad defeat.

“We only lost three points. If we’d have lost 1-0 and 2-0 we would still have forfeited three points.

“The alarm bells have rung a bit because of the nature of the defeat.

“It was in midfield that they battered us. They had three in the middle and we never really recovered from the two goals that we conceded very early on.

“We still looked like we had the potential to score, but the third goal just killed the game off.” Looking ahead to the clash against fith placed Curzon, Luczka added: “We can’t afford to wallow in self pity. We’ve got to train hard and bounce back on Saturday.

“It will be another very tough game against Cuzon. We will have our work cut out. But this is a very tough level. For us to have done as well as we have done up to now has been extremely pleasing, but that defeat has brought us down to Earth and we’ve got to keep going and keep our heads up and believing in our ability to win football games at this level.”