VIDEO: Players won’t dwell on Windsor defeat - Tipton

“You can’t hide behind it - we gave them a goal after a minute,” said the striker.

“Two of our boys went for one long ball and it has been our downfall all season.

“Obviously we were on the back foot but I thought we played reasonably well in the first half and I thought we were comfortable in possession.

“The manager made a couple of changes at half-time, Cush scored two cracking goals and if I’m honest, I thought Cliftonville were out on their feet.

“It was a fantastic finish for the winner but we could have done better leading up to it. We should have stopped the cross leading up to it and then the header and could we have closed him down quicker. But it’s a cup final, people make mistakes, other people turn out to be matchwinners and today it was Cliftonville’s day.

“We would have loved to have played the way we did for the first 15 minutes of the second half for the whole 90 minutes but that’s maybe why we’re sitting eighth in the league - we can’t do it consistently.

“We had a huddle at the end of the game and had a bit of a chat and I said ‘today is gone now’. There’s no point moaning about was the ball over the line or was it a penalty.

“What we can do is take the positives from that game. I thought we put it up to them, got in among them and were challenging.

“We lost with 10 minutes to go but we’ve got them in the Irish Cup win two week’s time - why not see if we can have a go at them again, from the first minute,” added Tipton.