CRESTFALLEN Graham Potter was left devastated after seeing his last-gasp leveller against Exeter City ruled out, but he admitted: "We got what we deserved".

With City 3-2 down, Potter looked to have salvaged a precious point with his injury-time strike only for referee Joe Ross to rule out the goal.

It was a cruel blow for City, the Chingford official blowing for full-time just as Potter let fly. It was a decision which left the City midfielder mystified.

"The referee shouted a minute to go and I'm guessing only 30 seconds had passed," explained Potter.

"When the ball came to me I had only one thing in mind and that was to strike it. I struck it well and he blew up. I was absolutely distraught to be honest.

"I've never experienced anything like it. Knowing my luck, if I'd shot and it had gone over the stand he would have let it carry on."

Potter insisted, however, City had only themselves to blame. After dominating the opening 30 minutes, defensive lapses allowed Exeter to grab a 2-0 half-time lead.

A Lee Bullock strike on 55 minutes sparked hope of a City fight-back but another defensive error allowed Christian Roberts to score his fifth goal in three games against the Minstermen and restore Exeter's two-goal lead.

Substitute Alex Mathie pulled another goal back for City on the stroke of full-time before Potter's effort was ruled out.

"Goals change games. We were in control but gave bad goals away. If you give bad goals away at any level you are struggling," conceded Potter.

"We came back well in the second half and at 2-1 we looked like we were going to go on and win the game. But we shot ourselves in the foot and gave another bad goal away and it is all uphill again.

"Credit to us for getting back in the game again, but you cannot expect to win games and give three goals away at home."

Manager Terry Dolan admitted the whistle had gone just before Potter's strike.

But he maintained the four minutes added time at the end were not enough given there had been five substitutions and a booking for Lee Nogan.

"On my watch the booking took well over three minutes before he decided what he was going to do and restarted the game," said the City boss.

"We had three substitutions in the second half, which is a mandatory 30 seconds for each, and they had two.

"That in my mind makes it about five-and-a-half to six minutes of added time at least, and that's without any time-wasting which to be fair Exeter were quite clever at.

"So when I saw four minutes go up I was rather surprised.

"In the four minutes there were other time-wasting incidents and the referee has blown up bang on four minutes."

Updated: 10:20 Monday, October 08, 2001