Folkestone boss Neil Cugley felt his team lacked the belief to go all the way in the Bostik Premier play-offs.

Cugley branded his side the ‘nearly men’ after a season that saw them fall at the final hurdle on many fronts.

They came within a game of the FA Cup first round, were beaten Kent Senior Cup finalists, and missed out on a top-three league finish on the final day of the regular season.

After being blown away 4-0 at Hendon in their Play-off semi-final on Thursday, it was again a case of so near and yet so far for Invicta.

“I felt we were the nearly team this year,” said Cugley. “We’ve done tremendously well and the players have been brilliant.

“But we got to the fourth qualifying round of the FA Cup and couldn’t win that, the Kent Senior Cup final and didn’t win that, should have finished third instead of fourth and then came here and lost.

“I call them the nearly team and that’s no disrespect, a lot of them it is the first time they have played at this standard. They should be quite proud of what they’ve done.”

Cugley felt it was the belief that they could go on and perform at the next level which was missing from his squad.

“I think we didn’t have that belief or want to get in that Conference South,” he added. “It may seem too much.

“We knew how they’d play and we didn’t deal with it at all.

“It showed a little bit in our play I don’t think we had the desire to go and play in the next league.

“I think we’ve got a lot of players who feel more comfortable (at this level) and maybe that was on their minds a bit, I don’t know.”

Read the match report from Hendon 4 Folkestone Invicta 0 here

Another area Cugley is keen to improve on is Invicta’s professionalism off the field, especially if they have aspirations to fight for promotion again next season.

“We didn’t have a very good trip up and that didn’t help,” said Cugley.

“We were a bit late getting here, and was stuck in traffic. I’m not making an excuse but it doesn’t help at this standard.

“If you’re going to be a semi-professional club, which hopefully Folkestone will be over the next couple of years, we’ve got to be a bit more professional in that way.

“The game was finished early on but you’ve got to be a bit more professional in the way we do things as well.”

As for the match, which saw Hendon score four first-half goals to effectively end the contest, Cugley had no excuse – although he was surprised how quickly his side were blown away.

“Their forwards are class players and to be fair we couldn’t get near them in the first 20 minutes,” added the Invicta boss.

“To be fair they could have scored before (the first goal) and a couple afterwards so you’re talking about a lot of chances. When it was 2-0 we were back in the game for a little while, but then the third and fourth goals – bang – it’s time to go home time.

“Some of my players who have played really well all year didn’t perform defensively as they’d like to.

“They’ll be devastated but you’ve got to give them credit as they kept the ball moving – it wasn’t just one individual going through us.

“It was pass and move and we didn’t cope with that very well.

“We were going to do this and that at half-time and at 2-0 if we get a goal then it can change. To be fair they were good goals, sometimes you have to hold your hand up and say you’ve lost to the better side.”