Magpies boss Matt Henman was left to rue what might have been on Saturday after seeing his side fall to a 2-1 home defeat at the hands of league leaders VCD Athletic, despite dominating the second half.

He said: ' In the first half we thought that we battled very well, defended well and if we hadn't surrendered as much possession as we did or we had managed to take at least one of the chances we created then I think the out come would have been different today. We worked on playing without the ball before the game and our plan today was to let them play and try to hit them on the counter attack. Which for large parts of the game worked very well and I'm pleased with how we executed our plan, but we gave away two cheap goals which we can't do at this level. We have learn a lot about ourselves today and the main thing that we have learnt from our last two games is that we are more than capable of matching any team in this league and we are really proud of the way we have battled against two very experienced sides.'

After starting brightly the Magpies fell behind after 22 minutes when James Duckworth scored from range with a powerful right footed drive, which left Dereham keeper Andy Wilton with no chance.

However the Magpies responded well with Shaun Bammant hitting the post just seconds later, before Luke Tuttle bagged his third goal in as many games to make it 1-1 after 29 minutes. In first half stoppage the Magpies were made to pay for a comedy of errors at the back which lead to Peter Smith putting the visitors back in front against the run of play.

In the second half the Magpies continued to press for an equaliser but in the end despite creating several chances, were made to pay for poor finishing as VCD snatched a fortunate win.