BRENDON King admitted rustiness had played its part in Portland United's 3-2 Sydenhams Wessex Premier Division loss to Hamworthy United on Saturday.

King's men effectively lost the game in five manic first-half minutes as the Hammers surged into a 3-0 lead through Eddie Hodge's brace, sandwiching an Olly Davis strike.

A spirited second-half fightback came up just short as a Ben Morris thunderbolt and an Ed Bastick strike could not hand the Blues a share of the points.

Speaking to Echosport, King felt the Blues lacked their usual freshness.

He said: "With how the days have fallen for Christmas it's been very difficult for us to get a session in between Christmas and (Hamworthy).

"We're in the Wessex League and we can't dictate to players to come in and train on Boxing Day. It's just the way the world is.

"I'm not paying people two, three hundred pounds a week and dictating to them that they've got to turn up to training. They've got families of their own.

"What you do then expect is them to go out and do a little bit on their own to try and prepare for the game – I don't know if enough of the lads did that.

"At times it showed. We were a little sluggish in the first half and off it.

"We spoke about it in the week and are we going to be fresh? It's that 50-50 toss of a coin.

"We didn't play the Saturday before and sometimes it did look like we haven't played for a couple of weeks.

"We were a little bit rusty but having said that (Hamworthy) took their goals well and deserved to be 3-0 in front at that point."