STUNNED, disbelieving, still shaking his head in bewilderment and almost too depressed to talk.

Not the emotions you usually associate with a man who has just scored a last-minute goal to open his account for a new club.

But Gary Dicker’s late finish from a great bit of Gary Hart wing play counted for nothing in the end.

And the 22-year-old Irishman knows his loan spell from Stockport could be ending in relegation as a result.

Usual practice after the final whistle for an Albion game is for the media to request two players for interview.

The request is then cleared by the manager and the players in question brought out to speak.

Adam Virgo, the nemesis of Swindon as the Wiltshire reporters called him, was an obvious choice on Saturday as goalscorer, captain and a former player of Colchester, the Seagulls’ next opponents.

Dicker? Well, he scored, had a hand in another goal and had operated in a bit of a different midfield role in the last two games so why not call for him?

The trouble was, he was almost lost for words in the aftermath of a numbing defeat.

Fair play to him, he did his best and was strikingly honest.

But, at times, it was the pauses, the looks out towards that goal where Swindon scored three times in 11 fateful minutes, which said as much as the words.

Some fans will have felt angry at about 5.15pm on Saturday. Maybe they still do.

But some will have felt numb, just the same as the hired midfield hand from Edgeley Park and no doubt his team mates.

“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” he said. “That first ten minutes (after half-time) was madness. It changed the season.

“If we had got two back to back wins we would have been right in the mix, I suppose."

And then he trailed off. So what was the madness down to?

“You can’t just point the finger at one person.A whole lot of us started off slack and you just can’t do that at this level.

“You get punished and we did by three goals. It’s not even as if they only scored one in that ten minutes.

“They punished us with three of them. It was an uphill battle straight away.”

One reporter put it to Dicker that it might be good for fans to see how shattered the players were after such a result.

It proved they cared, was the theory.

“It's foolish to say people don’t care,” he replied.

“Us, the lads, we just go home and you’re constantly thinking about what you could have done. I don’t think there is one person that isn’t hurting.

“It's easy for people to point the finger but we’ve got to stay together.”

He added: “I don’t think anyone wants to make mistakes or do badly. Everyone has to take a look at their own form, including myself, and I think we could have done a hell of a lot better.”

Dicker admitted he does not even know if his parent club Stockport will let him play against them on the final day of the season.

That is if the relegation battle goes that far.

So what about some tactical talk? Dicker started off, as at Hereford, in a more withdrawn midfield role with Dean Cox at the head of the diamond and Tommy Fraser and the lively Doug Loft playing wide. Well, sort of wide anyway.

They need more width, Fraser tends to cuts inside, we thought.

Then Fraser did indeed cut inside on a terrific run and won the corner which brought the first goal.

So much for the experts in the stand.

Later, Dicker came a bit further forward in a more linear 4-4-2, the same switch as at Hereford.

It was from there that he got the late goal which, in the end, was worth nothing. “I’ve played that role at Stockport so I’ve got used to it,” he said of the deeper midfield berth.