Display disgusts Holleran

Holleran used the game to give some of his squad players a run-out, with Craig Wilding, Peter Faulds and Chris Murphy stepping up off the bench and James Rowe and Stephan Morley making their first starts for the club.

However, it was Morton Titteron’s Midland Alliance side who looked the far livelier over the 90 minutes, thoroughly deserving their 2-0 win in front of a crowd of 492.

“You want to get everyone involved and we had more than enough on the pitch to go to Stratford and put in a performance that you’d expect to win the game,” said Holleran, who had been laid low in the run-up to the game with sickness and diarrhea.

“When you put squad players on the pitch, you want them to give you something to think about, to say to you, pick me, pick me. But at the end of the game I was thinking, release me, release me.

“I won’t hide behind the fact it was the Birmingham Senior Cup. It just wasn’t good enough. We need our fringe players to come in and perform and keep the momentum going.

“One or two players’ futures are on the line.”

Despite a lacklustre showing from his side, Holleran denied he was taken by surprise by the quality of Stratford’s performance.

“They played very well and for all I am going on about our performance, you’ve got to give Stratford credit.

“The’ve got a good balance, a youthful side and we always knew they would be up for it.”

Brakes return to league action on Tuesday with a trip to Chesham, but first they must travel to Woodford in the first round of the FA Trophy.

And, Holleran is calling on his side to return to his core values in order to avoid another embarrassing cup exit.

“All the games we’ve had this season, even the ones we’ve lost, we’ve had good periods.

“But I struggle to fathom whether we created one good chance at Stratford.

“Recently we’ve been solid and compact and you expect to be able to make four or five changes and continue in that manner.

“I am always preaching application, discipline and hard work and against Stratford we didn’t tick any of those boxes.”

Meanwhile, Stratford Town assistant manager Jason Cadden was full of praise for his patched-up side, feeling the scoreline flattered the visitors.

“Out of the ten games we’ve been here, there’s only been one bad performance and everything came together nicely,” said Cadden. “We should have had it done and dusted before the break.”

Cadden denied he had approached the game any differently despite his Leamington connections, but did admit the result, and performance, had been especially sweet.

“We’ve done ourselves a lot of favours with that display and it was nice to win for the old guys.

“For me, it was just another game until I turned into the stadium car park and thought ‘I want to beat this lot’.

“It was nice to get one over them.”