NIALL MCGUINNESS bemoaned Flint Town United’s fortunes as they suffered a fifth successive top-flight defeat.

Missing the experienced John Danby and Wes Baynes, Flint were forced into a defensive reshuffle at half-time against Cardiff Met with Nathan Craig suffering an injury.

And within four minutes of the restart, Cardiff Met were ahead as Dylan Rees’ drilled a long range strike into the bottom corner of Aaron Jones’ net.

Oliver Hulbert doubled the Met advantage less than 180 seconds later and Flint were facing an uphill battle to try and get something out of the contest.

Callum Bratley pulled a goal back, but Alex Jones had a strong claim for a penalty - his second of the game - waved away late on and Flint, who also had an effort ruled out for offside, were forced to settle for a 2-1 defeat.

“If we’d gone 1-0 up we’d have comfortably won the game,” said boss McGuinness.

“The ball just doesn’t seem to be dropping for us and then they go and score one out of nothing. One that usually ends up in the car park ends up in the bottom corner.

“We needed to regroup, but we couldn’t do that quickly enough and they score a second goal.

“It will only take us to go in-front to comfortably win a game, but at the moment it’s hard to take because we were miles the better side.”

On his side’s fortunes in front of goal, McGuinness continued: “We’ve had a blatant penalty turned down when Alex was too honest. He stayed on his feet - as we tell the players to - but you could hear the contact and nothing was given.

“Ben Nash has also scored a goal which was ruled out for offside that looked touch and go, similar to their second goal.

“It’s just tough to take at the moment and all we can do is look to the next game.”

Flint have the chance to end their unwanted sequence of events against Bala Town at the Essity Stadium tomorrow evening.

Colin Caton’s Lakesiders made it three victories in succession with a 2-0 triumph at Newtown.

Nathan Peate and Chris Venables scored at the end of either half to secure all three points for Bala at Newtown, who had George Hughes sent-off for two quickfire yellow cards late on.

Robins boss Chris Hughes was frustrated to see his side lose a game they could - and perhaps should - have got something from.

Hughes told the club’s official website: “It’s a similar story to what we’ve been saying all season.

“Again, we’ve played really well for large parts, dominated large parts of the game and we’ve come away with nothing.

“When you play Bala you know how they are going to score goals - they are really strong from set-plays and Chris Venables’ back-post headers.

“You’ve got to take your chances when you are on top, and we just haven’t done that, which is disappointing. We’ve probably had four or five excellent opportunities in the first-half, really, really good opportunities.

“One of those has to go in and if one of those does, without stating the obvious, it changes the whole complexion of the game.”