LEE Sinnott insisted his side had been short-changed after Altrincham took the game to National League leaders Cheltenham, only to suffer the narrowest of defeats by a single goal.

Undaunted by their hosts' standing as promotion favourites, Alty were on the front foot for long periods and threatened the Cheltenham goal with two Jordan Sinnott efforts, one ruled out for offside against Damian Reeves and the other cleared off the line.

Reflecting on how his side battled without reward, after being undone by a second-half penalty, Alty boss Sinnott said:

"Did we do well? I thought we did better than well.

"There's the old adage that sometimes you don't get what you deserve in football, and that was certainly the case here.

"The approach was spot-on.

"We were coming to the league leaders but were not fazed one bit.

"We applied ourselves extremely well and created opportunities we maybe should have done better with.

"I can't fault the players, though. I thought they were tremendous, and any neutral coming into the ground unaware of the league table, might have asked what position the team in yellow were occupying.

"On the penalty, from where I was looking at it, you step back a bit and think that's going to be given, so I've no qualms about the award.

"But I am disappointed, because we acquitted ourselves well and did not deserve to come away empty-handed.

"Now it's important we take the attitude and performance levels from Colchester and Cheltenham into our Christmas campaign and put points on the board."

Alty's next league outing sees them host Chester on Boxing Day (3pm) before a trip to the Wirral to face Tranmere Rovers on Monday (3pm).