COLCHESTER United boss Steve Ball admitted his side's performance was 'nowhere good enough' after they crashed out of the FA Cup on penalties to Marine.

The U's lost 5-3 in a penalty shoot-out to go out of the competition at the first-round stage at the hands of their Northern Premier League Division One North West opponents, after the tie had finished 1-1 after extra-time at the JobServe Community Stadium.

Michael Howard scored Marine's winning penalty after Josh Bohui had missed from the spot, as Colchester went out of the FA Cup at the first hurdle for the fifth successive season.

The tie had gone to extra-time and penalties after finishing 1-1 after 120 minutes, with skipper Harry Pell having cancelled out Anthony Miley’s first-half opener for Marine.

Ball said: "It's a blow to go out and I didn't see that level (of performance) coming today.

“It was a really poor day for us and I don’t think we really got going at all.

“Obviously whatever level you play, if you don’t play at the level you can you’re going to get hurt and we’ve been hurt today.

“Marine were organised and worked hard and the message was very clear.

“We’d trained really well on Thursday and Friday and there was some real positivity after beating Stevenage.

“But we didn’t start or getting going – we had little moments here and there but it was nowhere near good enough.

“It was a sloppy free-kick that we conceded for their goal which we didn’t really recover from and that maybe told the tale.

“We were poor – we’ve had a little bit of a debrief in there and we’ve got to go back to the drawing board a bit on Monday, regroup, work out what happened today and move on.”

"For us to hit the levels we did on Tuesday night (against Stevenage) and then to dip to that level against a team that are organised and worked hard; there was no surprises with what they did but our quality was so poor today.

"We have to move on from it."

Bohui, who came on as a first-half substitute for the injured Callum Harriott, was left devastated after missing from the spot.

Harry Pell, Noah Chilvers and Jevani Brown had all earlier netted for the U's in the shoot-out.

"He's taken the penalty," added Ball.

"We had a good chat with the boys after the game and he was very keen to take on but penalties are missed sometimes."