By Katie Humphris

Greg Cundle earned plenty of praise despite Ebbsfleet's FA Cup Second Round exit to Fleetwood on Sunday.

The wing-back more than held his own in a terrific battle with Fleetwood's Shaun Rooney, and it was a challenge the 25-year-old enjoyed.

"Joe Martin said to me after the game 'you probably up your game when you play against better defenders' and I think that's true to an extent," said Cundle.

"I knew I was going to have a tough game going forward and defending but I think I did pretty well.

"These players are playing League 1 football week in, week out, so we knew it was going to be a bigger challenge than the players you play normally. You have to embrace it and try the best you can and that's what I did.

"We saw in the week what they could do and they probably saw in the week what we could do and overall it was a good battle. He pushed me one way, I pushed him the other, so it was a good battle, I enjoyed it."

Cundle took plenty of satisfaction from Ebbsfleet's display, despite their exit at the hand of Football League opponents.

"We always knew it was going to be difficult but throughout the week the gaffer told us there's not going to be much in it and that if we play to our best, we've got a chance to win the game," said Cundle.

"We came up a little bit short but we gave a good account of ourselves and it was a tough game for them.

"We were in the game for pretty much the whole game so we're disappointed to be out but we'll have to look to the league and kick on from there."

Stonebridge Road had a different feel with TV cameras and electric advertising boards around the ground.

But Cundle tried to block out the extra attention during the 90 minutes.

"It was a good opportunity to show what we could do on TV," he said.

"You just try as hard as you can to focus on the game and make it as normal as possible, go out and do what we have done for the majority of the season so far.

"I enjoyed it, the fans came out in their numbers and a big thank you to them for coming out and I'm glad we could give them a good game, unfortunately not the win though."

Ebbsfleet have suffered three straight defeats in all competitions and Cundle admitted it's a strange feeling.

"We've had a strange run because we haven't deserved to lose three games in a row," reflected Cundle. "We will put that behind us now and look to kick on towards Christmas, play our games in hand and see where we end up.

"It is a strange feeling but two of them have been cups and only one of them was in the league.

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"The Tonbridge defeat still hurts because that's our unbeaten run over, I don't think we deserved to lose on the day but we didn't take our chances and they did.

"That hurts as we would have liked to have stayed unbeaten for as long as possible but we knew it was going to be a tough ask to go all season.

"The league is our main focus, it's got to be, it's going to be tough, there is still plenty of football to be played but if we win our games, we will go back to the top and go from there."