Collings left to rue his side's bad luck.

Durham City .......................................... Ashton United........................................

DURHAM City manager Lee Collings is hoping his side used up all their bad luck for the season in the opening day of the UniBond League campaign, writes STUART RAYNER. Durham lost at home to Ashton United in Saturday's Premier League game and their boss is still not quite sure how. City hit the post twice, had a shot cleared off the line and another disallowed for offside, and forced numerous saves from Terry Smith in a dominant first-half dis-play. But Ashton rode their luck, took the lead through Ben Smith in the 46th minute and Durham never recovered.

"I was speaking to the chairman and he said we'll never get as unlucky as that again," said Collings. "Any other day the game would have been done and dusted by half-time.

"You can not blame the linesman but he had a poor game. Paul Brayson was never offside (for his disallowed goal).

"And he had one effort where he chipped the goalkeeper and the wind held the ball up long enough for one of their lads to get back and clear. Some of the lads said it was definitely over the line, some said it was tight. The performance in the first half was excellent. It should have been done and dusted by halftime.

"We knew the first five minutes of the second half would be crucial and we conceded within a minute. There were a couple of missed tackles, one of their lads went for an overhead kick which he completely skewed to where his teammate (Smith) was standing unmarked not interested in the game and he put it into the net. We didn't do enough in the second half to come back from that. Once they scored they shut up shop and went 4-5-1." Durham's misfortune was compounded by the off-field problems they had in the build-up to the game.

"I released two strikers on Thursday night - (Marc) Walton and (Alex) Benjamin - for certain reasons I don't want to go into and it left us a bit light," said Collings. "We had to go with Brayson on his own up front, then Tommy English went off injured. I'm hoping to get a couple of strikers in this week."

DURHAM CITY: Turns, Laws, Newby, Dodds, Wilkinson, Carr, Moore, Elliott (Bonar 73), Brayson, English (Kevin Dixon 81), Smith. Subs (not used): Ian Dixon, Marc Riches, Shaun Bell