Joey Dunn was quick to show his disappointment after Widnes were heavily beaten 5-0 by Handsworth Parramore in the Emirates FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round on Sunday.

The loss at the Halton Stadium, the heaviest defeat since Dunn took charge last season, meant that Widnes' first-ever FA Cup tie ended with a bitterly disappointing outcome.

Aaron Moxon netted a second-half brace for the visitors, who will now visit Parkgate in the Preliminary Round in two weeks time.

Dunn labelled the performance as falling way below the levels he has come to expect from a Widnes side.

He said: "It was one of those days where we weren't at the races. We talked beforehand about working well on both sides of the game, with or without the ball but we didn't do enough of that.

"In possession, we were really poor and we never recovered from a sloppy start - we never established any tempo or momentum in our game.

"The goals we conceded were really poor ones to concede. The first goalscorer won a header earlier and we never learned out lesson from that. Being costly in possession led to the second and third goals whilst the fourth and fifth were poor from our point-of-view.

"We seemed to have been punished every time we made a mistake.

"It's obviously very disappointing but it's always the manner in which you lose, but I don't think that we've given a good enough account of ourselves today and the players have been told that."

Dunn is keen for his side to put this loss behind them and come back even stronger.

"We were fortunate that we didn't make too many mistakes as a collective unit last season," Dunn said.

"We had long periods of possession in the first-half at 1-0 and if we'd have taken a chance at that point then the outcome would probably have been different.

"Timing is always important in football and they got two goals quickly after half-time that killed the game.

"After City of Liverpool beat us heavily in the cup last season, we sat down, dusted ourselves down and thought about what we were doing. We accepted the plaudits when we were doing well and the opposite when we weren't doing so well.

"We know we'll have to do that again and come back stronger."

Dunn is now expecting a response from his players, who get their 2017/18 Hallmark Security Premier Division campaign underway at West Didsbury & Chorlton next week.

He said: "It's always disappointing to get knocked out of the FA Cup, with all the prestige and financial rewards - it's nice to be involved in that.

"But the league is what we're really interested in. It's a bit raw at the moment to look at cliches, but we know what we've got to do and we know that we won't be that bad again.

"We know that we have to be back on the money next week at West Didsbury - it's a different game, a different week and a different competition.

"One thing about the FA Cup is that you'll never win it at our level. It's still disappointing but we have to go pick ourselves up and go again next week."