Downham bosses left frustrated by loss

Downham Town’s management team could not hide their frustrations after suffering a late defeat against high-flying Newmarket Town on Saturday.The home side dominated the first half of their Thurlow Nunn Premier Division encounter against the Jockey’s but went home empty-handed after twice coming from behind to draw level in a 3-2 defeat.Joint boss Craig Dickson said: “I think first half especially it was a great game and we’ve created numerous chances.

“We should have been ahead in the first half and should have put the game to bed in the first 35 minutes.”They’ve scored against the run of play where their lad has nicked it off our centre half and he’s lobbed our goalkeeper, it was a great goal, to be fair to him.“We’ve got back into the game to make it 1-1 at half-time, but I think second-half they grew into the game.”They were much better in the second-half but I still felt like we deserved something from the game.”

“The one thing about these boys is that they do give us everything every week and they’ve done that again today.”I think the first half was one of our best performances of the season so far in terms of a 45 minutes. I can only really think it Woodbridge away which sort of matches it in terms of effectiveness in terms of defensively.”I thought we were really good, but the start of the second-half sort of killed us a little bit and allowed them to sit that little bit deeper and make it more difficult for us to break them down.

“We haven’t really done quite enough with the chances we created early in the first half, which would have won us the game had we taken them.”Fellow joint boss Dale Stokes felt his players could have restricted Newmarket to fewer chances in the match and was disappointed with all three goals conceded.”For their third, we’ve been got caught two against one out wide and I don’t think we’ve dealt with balls into the box well enough.

“Although I felt like we had good control at times in the game we always looked like we could make a mistake that could cost us.”That kind of sums it up. I look at that and don’t think they deserved to score three goals today and I don’t think they’ve done enough to score three.”We didn’t follow runners into the box and clear the ball properly for their second and I think we’ve gifted them all three of their goals.

“They scored two minutes into the second half and I think that kind of set the tone for the rest of the half really.”We didn’t start the half well enough and they did the same at their place.

“We didn’t create too much in the second half but we got it back to 2-2 and then you hope you can keep it solid and perhaps go and get another one, but three minutes later we concede again.”

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Football Greg Plummer

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