Telford boss Rob Smith: 'It was men against boys'

Midfielder Elliot Whitehouse scored a hat-trick after netting on five, 31 and 73 minutes, while Callum Chettle (48) made it 3-0 and Aaron Williams 4-1 on 66.

Chettle also hit the bar while Telford's lone reply came from Connor McCarthy (54) as the Bucks slid to their heaviest defeat of the season.

"I just think they were too good for us. Sometimes you've got to take your hat off to the opposition and they're the best side I've seen in this division by a country mile," said Smith.

"They were sharp and excellent and you could see the full-time training in them.

"There are no excuses - they did to us what they're doing to a lot of teams and I'll be very surprised if they don't go on and win the league.

"From looking at what I've seen, I was very impressed.

"Having said that, we thought we'd go with three strikers and thought we'd go a bit more 'route one' and a bit more physical to cause them more problems and we didn't, which was the disappointing thing, and we gave them some cheap goals.

"But it was men against boys and there wasn't a lot we could do about it.

"If we'd have tried to match them at football, they'd have played us off the park so we tried to go another way and it didn't work."

Smith admitted Telford were overrun in midfield by the full-timers but admitted the real battles lie ahead with Worcester City, Curzon Ashton and Lowestoft to come shortly.

"They had four lads in midfield who overran us and they have a guy in Callum Chettle who you'll be seeing a lot more of at a lot higher level in years to come," he said.

"We've got to look after ourselves because it's not about this game for us, it's about the next three or four league games which are really massive for us now.

McCarthy pulled one back to make it 3-1 and Connor Hassan was denied on his first start but Smith never thought a comeback was on the cards after conceding cheaply at key times.

"Not really. Set-pieces were our only chance of getting anything back and we kept giving them goals at bad times," he said.

"Early on we gave them a goal, then we came out after half-time a bit buoyant thinking we were going to have a go and we gave them a cheap goal, we got one back and gave them another cheap goal.

"You can't keep doing that in football. The other thing was they were clinical - every time they had a chance, it went 'bang' in the corner.

"You had to take your hat off to them."

Telford's misery was compounded when captain McCone went off with a recurrence of his knee injury, wile Jack Rea has a foot injury courtesy of the ugly tackle that saw Shane Byrne sent off in the 83rd minute.

"When it first happened he thought 'that's the end, it's gone again' but it feels a bit better now," said the boss.

"It's not right so we'll have to assess it again in the week.

"Jack Rea got a bad injury at the end - he's hurt his foot so we'll be assessing that.

"The sending off? I think there was a doubt about it - I don't think it was a red myself and Jack said the same."