COLCHESTER United manager John Ward understands why the club’s fans booed during last night’s lacklustre 1-0 defeat at Essex rivals Dagenham & Redbridge.

He said: “The supporters were disappointed the same way as I was, they’ve only got one way of venting that and I think tonight they’ve got a point.

“I feel for our supporters because when they really wanted a win for a few bragging rights we’ve not been able to give it to them.

“It’s the biggest disappointment of our season so far. We’ve had games where we’ve not played very well but given it our all, but tonight too many of the team were quiet.

“We’ve not been mentally or physically strong enough to deal with the evening and probably, for the first time, I’m not really able to come out and defend my team for what I’ve just seen.”

He continued: “It was a soft performance, we’ve been embroiled in a really poor game of football from both teams and we’ve been the poorest of the two. We’ve got what we deserved, which is nothing, because we’ve shown no real determination.

“You have to deal with games like this sometimes because not all of the 46 games are nice games of football. Sometimes you’ve got to fight.

“There was a lot of poor football for the supporters, not that the Dagenham supporters will mind, but it was a poor evening’s fare.

“The one thing I’ve defended this season is our approach and attitude but we looked lacklustre tonight, we didn’t have urgency and there were too many of our players not showing enough zest for the game.”

With Colchester now 10 points of the play-off places with just 11 games to go, Ward added: “Nothing’s ever over but the opportunities are getting less. We won’t give it up but we’ve got to do better than that.”