Romford manager Paul Martin is backing his talented young side to bounce back from their FA Cup exit.

Boro fell to a 1-0 home defeat against local rivals Hornchurch in their first qualifying round tie on Sunday, with Nathan Cooper’s 18th-minute goal proving decisive.

And boss Martin felt his side were below their best, as Urchins pocketed the £3,000 prize money and earned a trip to Hertford Town or Grays in the next round.

He said: “The final decision, the final pass was too heavy, or the wrong decision.

“Sometimes that’s the players you’ve got when you’re pulling them from park football, that little bit of quality, naivety.

“There’s some good young talent there. We went with the experience side of it and it worked. We battled a lot better but there’s not a lot of quality there. Big Olu Giwa came on and did well. He will be an asset for us and it’s just a matter of breaking into the team.”

It was a second loss in a week against Hornchurch, following the 4-1 Bank Holiday Monday reverse in their Bostik North derby at Bridge Avenue.

But prior to those two meetings, Martin felt his squad had made a good enough start to the new campaign and he has a new target in mind.

He added: “Now we’re out of the cup it’s concentrating on the league and getting as many points as we can in the league.

“We beat Stowmarket and Tilbury, 4-1, which was fantastic and then a bump down to earth against Hornchurch, but we’ve only lost two out of four.

“Four points isn’t bad for us. The two we’ve lost is the top two teams. After next week will be interesting because we’ve got Soham here, which is always a dog fight, and then Haringey Borough away on the Monday on the 4G.

“We all know what happened last year, the 7-1 defeat, so we’ve just got to make sure we improve and put the right team out.”