Shildon manager Gary Forrest was furious with his players after they were beaten 4-1 at home to Atherton Collieries in the fourth round of the FA Buildbase Vase on Saturday.

Shildon were in the lead at one point, but some poor defending let them down in a 20 minute period in the second half.

“I haven’t really got a lot to say about it publicly,” said Forrest. “I said plenty to the players in the dressing room after the game, and what I said will stay in there. I’m obviously not very happy after going a goal up. I’ve told the players what I feel like, you just to need to look at the goals we conceded to realise why.”

Shildon had a couple of chances to take the lead in the first half before they went ahead just after half time with a coolly-taken goal by Amar Purewal, but then a poor clearance by Shildon keeper Nick Liversedge allowed Ben Hardcastle to lob the ball into an empty net.

Mark Battersby headed Atherton into the lead from a cross by Mark Truffas, then the Shildon defence failed to deal with a corner and Dan Lafferty headed in.

And a possible trip to Wembley well and truly disappeared when Jordan Caver scored the fourth, to complete Atherton’s third victory over a Northern League side this season.

Billingham Town’s fairytale run came to an end when they were beaten 2-1 at home by Cleethorpes, although they nearly forced extra time.

The leaders of the Northern Counties East League hit Billingham with two goals inside the first 20 minutes to give the home side a mountain to climb and manager Barry Oliver said; “Cleethorpes had some quality up top, but I thought we matched them everywhere eels on the pitch. They got off to a good start, but in the second half we were a totally different team and we nearly forced extra time, but I suppose it’s one of those cup things “Even though we’ve lost, credit to our lads for getting us to this stage of the competition, it’s been a great run. It’s a matter now of reacting positively and winning promotion.”

Andy Taylor fired Cleethorpes into the lead after just three minutes, then Brody Robertson got the second.

Billingham had more of the game in the second half, and Chris Dickinson pulled a goal back. They threw everything forward, and nearly levelled when Gary Redman missed from a few yards.

Sunderland RCA are through to the last 16 for the second year running following their 1-0 away win at AFC Mansfield, Jonny Butler scoring their goal on 37 minutes.

RCA manager Marty Swales said; “The lads were brilliant, although if we’d taken our chances, we could have saved ourselves some squeaky bums in the last ten minutes.

“We should have been out of sight by half time with the chances we had, because we had too much pace for them. Mansfield tried to bully us a little bit, but we overcame that.

“It’s great to be through to the last sixteen again, especially for the town. The lads want to kick on further than they did in the last season, but we’d prefer to avoid the winners of the South Shields v Morpeth game.”

There was huge controversy at South Shields, where their tie with holders Morpeth was abandoned because of floodlight failure with Shields losing 4-2 with ten minutes remaining, just seconds after Liam Henderson had scored for the holders. Shields’ Julio Arca was sent off for two yellows on half time.

Morpeth manager Nick Gray said; “The game was won. Let’s see what happens, everyone knows what the right outcome should be.”

Morpeth’s Michael Turner was mistakenly sent off for a second yellow in the second half, the referee reversing his decision after realising that he had only been booked once.