THE margin of defeat may have been slender, but Newport IoW boss John Linington was honest enough to admit: "We got murdered" after a 2-1 reverse at Leatherhead.

Bizarrely the bottom-of-the-table Islanders might even have a grabbed a late point, but even Linington agreed it would have been daylight robbery.

"They were too good for us," he confessed. "Although they're in the lower half of the table, they're in a false position.

"Our keeper Joe McCormack kept us in it. We had nothing to combat Leatherhead in midfield. Everyone worked their backsides off, but we weren't man enough against a team like that with all their ex-pros."

Having fallen behind to a 48th-minute header by centre-back Mark Harper from a corner, Newport were architects of their own downfall as the Tanners doubled their lead through Adam Gray just after the hour.

Linington explained: "We've got set things we do to keep the ball safe, but we made a bad mistake from a throw-in and Leatherhead caught us cold from a quickly-taken throw-in of their own."

It was only in the dying minutes that Newport applied any telling pressure and yet they could well have stolen a point. Having capitalised on Iain Hendry's misdirected header to make it 2-1, Dave Greening almost equalised when he stabbed the rebound wide from Tom Scovell's blocked shot.