Manager Gary Johnson had no complaints as his Robins lost out to Crawley Town on the opening day of the season – but insisted his new-look team will play better.
Ollie Palmer scored the only goal of the game at the Jonny-Rocks Stadium with a second half header.
“It was a poor first half and we didn’t get to grips with their game at the time,” said Johnson.
“We managed to hang on in there with a couple of good saves from Scotty (Flinders) and one chance where Alex Addai put Manny Duku in and that was a good save by their goalkeeper.
“Unfortunately in the second half we didn’t create a lot of chances, but we did create a penalty and missed it, which was disappointing.
“There is a bit to do and these players are better than what we’ve seen today so hopefully we can bring it out of them as soon as we can.
“They probably deserved it overall and if we’d scored the penalty you maybe would have said we’d nicked a point on the day.
“I appreciate most of our crowd kept going and giving us support, because these lads are going to need that.
“Kalvin Kalala came on and made some good runs for us, also winning us the penalty, so we can look at him and know we have someone who can go past people.
“You are always looking to let in no goals and score goals,” he added.
“We had a couple of chances so we needed to create more. Our midfield didn’t really create enough opportunities for the forwards.
“It was only at the end when we were going for it and throwing people up there, but the ball didn’t drop for us and they had a lot of men in the penalty area.
“We had a lot of play but we weren’t quite there to put the ball in the back of the net.”