Dean Brennan admitted his priorities lay elsewhere this season as Barnet crashed out of the FA Trophy after losing 3-1 at Altrincham.

Despite Rhys Browne opening the scoring after 16 minutes, Altrincham forward Tom Crawford hit a second-half double and Joseph Nuttall added a late third as the Bees’ concerning run of form extended into the New Year.

And Brennan said: “It was a disastrous draw for us to come up here. I’m not prepared to take the risk with our senior players or our key players, and it’s a good opportunity to play the other lads.

“Our priority is the National League campaign, and some lads got some minutes. I made lots of changes to the team. We played really well in lots of phases of the game. To be fair to them, in the second half I knew we’d tire, and they took advantage of that.

“If I were in their position, I’d have done the exact same thing. From our point of view, we’ve got to look after our own. I want to thank the supporters for coming up here and I hope they didn’t feel we disrespected the competition. Our priority is the National League.”

With no other distractions remaining between now and the end of the season, Brennan reiterated his desire to focus solely on promotion to the English Football League for the first time since 2018.

“We’ve got 21 games - that’s our priority. Every one of them is a cup final, and it’s as simple as that,” he continued.

“We’re going to have to get more than we did last year when we got 86 [points]. We’ll go one game at a time, but I wish Altrincham all the best in the next round.

“Our focus now is to make sure we get better over the coming weeks, and we turn some of those draws we’ve had into wins. We’re unbeaten in our league campaign in our last 10 games, so that’s very good.

"We haven’t been beaten since October 22. We’re in good form, and we’re happy with our level of performance. We’ve probably dropped one or two points we feel we shouldn’t have, but that’s the business.

“We’ve got real excitement in the season now and we’re right in the mix.”

Brennan looked ahead to the third-placed Bees’ upcoming National League fixture against Hartlepool this weekend, before a trip to Forest Green Rovers on Tuesday.

He added: “It’s a tough game. They just went and beat Oldham last week. We drew 0-0 up there and played really well; we just didn’t get the rub of the green.

"We had a clear penalty on [Jordan] Cropper. I’m expecting a really tough game. They’re in decent form like ourselves, so there are no easy games.

“It’s a busy week next week."