'We didn't show up' - Chesterfield captain feels 'sorry' for travelling Spireites fans after defeat to Dorking Wanderers

Town were outfought at Meadowbank and could have lost by a bigger margin in the end.

There were more than 800 Blues supporters there but they went home disappointed.

Grimes said: “I really feel sorry for the fans who travelled down. They have made the effort, singing from the first whistle, and we didn’t show up. Unfortunately we have had a really bad day and we have been made to pay for it.”

It was a performance full of errors and Dorking took advantage.

Grimes explained: "We were trying to play, but they went man-for-man, and on a sticky surface we couldn’t get the ball moving. They kept winning the second balls, which is really frustrating, the basics of football. I was getting man-marked by Jason Prior all game. He was standing next to me. It was just up to us to try to do something different and when we did we gave the ball away and conceded. They did a job on us today. They (Dorking) have not done that in the weeks before and they have just come straight on top of us, gone man-for-man, and got the better of us. Fair play to Dorking, they are scrapping for their lives, they have grafted and got the goals off a few of our errors. It was just a bad day for us.”

Chesterfield trailed 2-0 after 25 minutes but got themselves back in it just before-half-time but then a mistake from Grimes allowed the hosts to go 3-1 up.

Grimes said: "I will take the blame for that. I have tried to pass to Ash (Palmer) and Ash has stepped back, Kingy has run away with his back to it and the guy (Tom Blair) has run in and scored. It is frustrating, not on the same wavelength. We were trying to do too much when we probably should have just kept it simple. It is my fault. I was just conscious that we were playing a lot of long football and I wanted to get us playing but it didn’t work out.”

Despite the defeat the Spireites are still 20 points clear at the top of the table with 10 games remaining.

Grimes added: “We are all disappointed. Everyone is gutted. We need a good week of training to get it out of our system and go for it against Fylde on Saturday.”