Will Boyle felt him and his Cheltenham Town teammates struggled to get going in the second half of Saturday's opening League Two defeat at Leyton Orient.
Josh Wright's second half goal proved to be the difference between the two sides in a contest that saw Cheltenham end the game with nine men following the red cards shown to Luke Varney and Rohan Ince.
Former Huddersfield Town man Boyle was pleased with the showing in the first 45 minutes, but didn't think the team settled in well to the game after the break.
"It's a tough one to take really because a lot happened especially in the second half," he said.
"First half I thought we came out and in the first 15 and 20 minutes it was frantic as we expected it would be, but I feel like we settled into the game well. I'd say we probably edged the first half - it felt like that to me anyway and obviously we'll reflect on that and see.
"It felt like we had the better of the play getting forward, working on the patterns out there that we've been working on.
"In the second half we never really got going. They've scored, 1-0, but even before that we never really put ourselves onto the game like we did in the first half so that was very disappointing.
"They've scored and then obviously the two red cards kill the game. On a positive note after the two red cards I think there was still 20 or 25 minutes to play and we've still given ourselves a fighting chance at the end, which is all we could do really - stay in the game, keep it to 1-0, and hopefully something will drop.
"To be fair they game managed it quite well. Nothing ever really dropped for us but we did what we could in the end and we showed character and stuck together, but we need to start the second half better than that."
Watch Boyle's full post-match interview above on iFollow.
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