Spennymoor manager Jason Ainsley blasted his players for some “shambolic “ defending after relegation-battling Stokesley pulled off one of the shock results of the season by beating the champions 3-2 on Saturday.

Moors, who are in the last 16 of the Vase, in the running to win their second successive title and two other cups, were absolutely dreadful defensively, according to a concerned Ainsley.

“We were a shambles in defence,” he said. “You wouldn’t have thought that we’ve got the best defensive record in the league, by the way we defended. I would say that it was schoolboy defending, but I would be disrespectful to schoolboys. Stokesley put three balls into our box, and we failed to deal with any of them.

“We’re not going to win anything if we continue to defend like that.”

Stokesley took the lead when Anthony Hume set up Glenn Robson to quickly turn and fire past Craig Turns. Moors piled on the pressure, and equalised five minutes into the second half when Tommy English crossed for Lewis Dodds to head in. But Stokesley regained the lead on 78 minutes with a strike by Lev Yalcin, but Moors managed to equalise through Leon Ryan following a short corner, and looked set to go on and win. But Moors’ defending let them down again when Robson scored from a Lev Yalcin cross.

Stokesley manager Ted Watts said: “For long periods in the game, we were under the cosh. But we defended well, and took our goals well.”

The result puts Stokesley level on points with West Allotment and a point behind Bishop Auckland.

West Auckland are up to fourth after they won 2-1 at Ashington. West missed some good chances in the 20 minutes, and could have scored a couple of them, but they had keeper Billy Hanson to thank at the other end for stopping Phil Bell’s spot kick.

And when West were awarded a penalty themselves at the other end when Matty Tymon was fouled, Mattie Moffat converted his 14th league goal of the season.

Chances continued to fall to both clubs, until midway through the second half when Chris Lund crossed for Steve Brown to score from a few yards.

Ashington pulled a goal back through an Andy Johnson header and West had their backs to the wall for the last 15 minutes.

West boss Peter Dixon said: “We were hanging on at the end, but only because we didn’t take our chances early in the game.”