DAVID Unsworth admitted a last minute of stoppage time defeat in his first home game in charge 'hurt', but insisted that he was proud of his players' performance against title chasing Wrexham, adding: "Our season starts now."

In front of their biggest crowd in almost a decade of 9,496, Latics led at the break for only the second time this season through Mike Fondop's superb solo effort before the half-hour.

But Latics ran out of steam as the second half progressed, and after Ben Tozer hit an 85th minute equaliser, Paul Mullin clinched it from the penalty spot in the last of the five minutes of stoppage time.

"It hurts," said Unsworth.

"I said to the players you've got to take your medicine because any last minute winner against you is always a sickener."

But the Latics boss's disappointment was tempered by a huge sense of pride in the performance.

"If you were at the game and you've seen what we did for about an hour, 70 minutes, you come away very proud of a performance and a work ethic and work rate of a team that will just get better from now.

"I've said that to the players, but it's a disappointing manner to lose any game in the last minute."

And Unsworth has quickly identified part of the problem.

"I thought we played really well in the first half, played some great football. We limited a top team to zero chances, at least I can't remember any. But second half I felt we ran out of steam and ran out of legs," he said.

"We were plugging holes everywhere and players were going down with cramp. I don't think they've ever ran as hard as they did today all season, or so I'm told.

"We will only get better and fitter from today's performance."

He added: "We just needed to hang on, we just needed a bit of luck, something to drop for us.

"To be fair to Wrexham they were relentless. Attack after attack. The subs that they bring on are all men, all 6ft 4, and I'm looking across - we're trying to plug some gaps and plug some holes.

"It was a tough last sort 15-20 minutes. But I'm very proud of the team, I'm very proud of the players. They gave me everything they've got and that's all I can ask for.

"I said to the players our season starts now. That's one away game and one home game and we've improved massively from last week, so our season starts now, and it's a big game on Tuesday night (against Scunthorpe)."