THE state of goalkeeper Danny Lewis’s knees was seen as a good measure of how Harriers tamed Sunderland’s star-studded strikeforce in Saturday’s FA Cup fourth round tie at the Stadium of Light..

Given the gulf in status between the clubs, the Black Cats could reasonably have expected to get their claws into the non-leaguers’ defence, but determined Harriers never remotely looked like becoming feline fodder.

Mickey Demetriou, who had an outstanding game at the heart of the back four, said: “The lads were gutted because we thought we could have got a result. Everyone played well and we had chances.

“For a Premiership team to struggle to break down a Conference team just shows the credit our lads deserve.

“Danny [Lewis] said during the game ‘my knees aren’t even dirty’ which goes to prove that he has had only two or three saves to make.”

The full-back turned centre-back added: “When they got the early goal I think their crowd thought it was going to be a five or six niller but the lads showed great spirit.

“Gash and Byrne had good chances to get an equaliser and near the end Freddie [Lapado] came on and came close to taking it back to Aggborough.

“Unfortunately it is a long way to come and not get a result but I think we did the cub proud.”

Demetriou went on: “Everyone expected them to win. We wanted to keep ourselves in the game as long as we could. They weren’t able to break us down and to be fair their goal was a bit lucky. It was a deflection into the forward’s feet and it was a great finish.

“But apart from that I can’t remember them testing Danny in the first half and in the second half I think they had one more chance.

“It was obviously gutting to come here and lose but to get through to the fourth round and be the only non-league team left in the competition and to put on that kind of display, the lads deserve a lot of credit.”

Turning his mind back to league action, he said: “This performance shows we can play better than the way we have done at times in the league and we have lost a bit of ground at the top so now we have got a lot of chasing to do and it is going to be tough.

“But if we play as tight as we did today, I think it will be a struggle for any of the teams in our league to break us down.”