Manager Chris Kinnear says people will judge Dover’s season on their league form following Tuesday’s FA Cup exit to Bromley.

Three second-half goals dumped Kinnear’s side out in their fourth qualifying round replay at Hayes Lane.

But while the Dover boss admitted he was disappointed, he was far from downhearted.

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“We’ve been playing with a lot of confidence,” said Kinnear. “You’re going to lose games, it’s disappointing this one is the FA Cup but it hasn’t cost us three points.

“People will judge us on where we are in the league. I’d rather be up near the top of the table than down the bottom and on a FA Cup run. At the moment, we’ve got to make the most of it and push on.

“I can’t really knock our players. We’re second in the table, there’s 22 other sides in our league who’d like to be in our position.

“You’re going to lose games. Massively disappointed, as we wanted an FA Cup run but it’s not to be this year.

“We’ve got to get on with the FA Trophy and the league and make sure we do well in that, I’m sure we will – we won’t feel sorry for ourselves.”

Dover’s cause at Bromley was not helped by injuries to Josh Passley (pulled gluteal muscle) and Giancarlo Gallifuoco (concussion).

It meant a re-jigged line-up in the second half, although Kinnear was not looking for excuses.

“Up until the goal it was quite even,” added the Dover boss. “At half-time losing Gio and Josh just changed the whole game really for us.

“You might as well lose 3-0 as 1-0 as it’s an FA Cup game. That’s the 16th game this season and we’ve only had two bad games.

Read the match report from Bromley's 3-0 win over Dover here

“We have to see how Gio is and hopefully Josh will be fit. We’ve got a few injuries at the moment but everyone gets that, we’ve just got to overcome that.”

Delighted Bromley boss Neil Smith, who now takes his side to League 1 Rochdale in the first round, said: “It was a big result, not just for me but for the club and the supporters.

“We wanted to get into that first round as we haven’t done it for a few years now.

“They’re a really good side, they are good at what they do and we had to withstand that.

“We knew if we could withstand that and get our style of football going then we’d get a result but it took a long time for us to do that.

“We knew on Saturday it was about staying in the hat so we made sure that when we got them back here that we were the dominant team.”