NEWPORT County boss Peter Beadle admitted his side gave everything they had in Saturday's narrow FA Trophy defeat to Torquay United.

The Exiles competed superbly against a team currently second in the Blue Square Conference, threatening to cause an upset in front of their biggest crowd of the season.

It was enough to delight boss Beadle, who felt with a bit more luck his side would have triumphed.

He explained: "We are disappointed to have lost the game and the big difference was Torquay looked like a full-time side at the end.

"They stayed mentally alert during the whole game whereas we switched off for their second goal.

"It was one ball up the channel that we knew they were going to do and we coped well all game apart from then.

"But I thought we had the lion's share of the play, we played the better football and we created the better openings.

"We needed to stay mentally strong because of the kind of team Torquay are and the style of football they play.

"It's not the kind of football we'd like to play but they do it very well and we paid the price for switching off for a few seconds."

Beadle praised the work-rate of his side.

"They couldn't have worked harder," he said.

"We had the worst possible start, but we looked like we believed we could win the game all the way through.

"It's a shame we didn't get a goal from open play because I felt we deserved one.

"But we feel proud of the way we performed and now we need to carry it into our league form.

"We learnt on Saturday that we can match a Conference side, we are not a full-time side yet and we still competed very well, we proved we can get there and keep ourselves there.

"Maybe we'd be better suited to that league, but it'll be a long hard battle to get there."