Tamworth FC coach Greg Bartlett didn't sugar coat things after their 23-game unbeaten Northern Inland Premier League run was ended by Demon Knights in Armidale on Sunday.
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Backing up from a 4-1 win over North Companions in Tamworth on Saturday, the premiers were outgunned 3-nil in their grand final replay.
"We weren't good enough," Bartett said.
"They outplayed us and outenthused us."
"We were second to everything."
Bartlett had expected a hard game, and true to form it was.
After leading 1-nil at half-time, DK slotted two quick goals early in the second half to put the game to bed.
Bartlett was philosophical about suffering their first loss in the competition since 2017 (they were beaten earlier this year by South Armidale in the FFA Cup in a penalty shoot-out).
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"All good things have to come to an end," he said.
"Credit to them (DK), we've had some good hard tussles over the last couple of years."
The loss was compounded by a potentially season-ending injury to Chris Hughes, who Bartlett said has probably been their best player this season.
He injured his knee with about 10 minutes remaining in the game.
Bartlett said afterwards it didn't look good with Hughes having to be carried from the field.
"I don't know that we might have him for the rest of the year. We'll just have to wait and see," he said.
He was happy with Saturday's performance.
"We were good yesterday," he said.
"We won 4-1 and probably should have won 7-1."
They missed two absolute sitters, he said.
"It was a defensive error they scored their goal on," he said.
"Other than that we were clearly the far better team."
