Micky Mellon is confident his Oldham Athletic players can bounce back from the disappointment of losing their FA Cup second round tie at Leyton Orient.

Having taken an early second half lead through Manny Monthe, Latics suffered two sucker punches - the first an equaliser a minute over the minimum of eight additional minutes of normal time, with the O's snatching the win in the last seconds of extra time.

"Football's a cruel game, a very, very cruel game," said Mellon in his post-match press conference.

"You've just got to look at the bits that we would be pleased about, which was plenty, and look at the bits that we're gaining because we were in every way, stride for stride, as good as a League One team on their own patch.

"But for a couple of refereeing decisions, or quite a lot of refereeing decisions, things may have been a wee bit different. But my players were fantastic and gave everything that they've got.

"We'll be disappointed about losing the goal right on the last heartbeat of the game - both moments. We will obviously be disappointed but we will take much more from this and take the positives out of it.

"The players are gutted because of when you lose the goals, that makes it worse, because it's so raw. You're there; you're over the line.

"Their goalie scores a header, and then right at the end they score in the last heartbeat as well, from a moment that should have been a free kick to us. It's a blatant handball in front of us. We were waiting for a free kick to put it into their box, we don't get it and from that they get the goal. These are the big moments that these referees have got to get right. It was blatantly obvious.

"It's just the way it is."

Speaking to the club's official website after the game, Mellon added: "I'm going to be more concentrating on the account my boys gave of themselves, I want to celebrate that and speak about that and I want to speak about our fans and how fantastic they were. Incredible support again.

"We don't take it for granted, we're just sorry we couldn't deliver on that last little bit. But we'll recover together, we'll go back up the road and we'll speak about how good of an account we gave of ourselves as a football club from the fans all the way right through to the players and we'll get ready for the game at the weekend."