Harrogate Town won’t play the blame game after defeat to Scunthorpe United

But, Sulphurites skipper Josh Falkingham insists that he and his team-mates are desperate to get better and will learn from the mistakes which cost them so dearly at Scunthorpe United.

Despite being the better side during the first half and dominating territorially for long periods of Saturday’s game, two lapses in concentration at the back gifted the Iron goals which would ultimately decide the contest.

“It’s so frustrating, we’ve been hit by two sucker-punches and then Scunthorpe have made it very difficult for us and gone on and managed the game quite comfortably,” Falkingham said after the defeat.

“There wasn’t really a lot of quality in the match, but we know that if you make less mistakes than your opponent then most of the time you’re going to come away with the result.

“Nine times out of 10 in this division, if you make an error at the back or lose concentration, the ball is going in your net.

“The first two are poor goals to concede, the second one is very avoidable, but we don’t point fingers here.

“It’s not like we just think ‘oh well, there were mistakes but it doesn’t matter’ – we deal with them internally, however we win and lose as a collective. We’re all in it together.

“I know that every single person in that dressing room is desperate to win every game, desperate to keep learning, to keep getting better.

“It feels like we take two steps forward then one back at the moment, so we have to learn from our mistakes and try and be more consistent in everything that we do.”

Harrogate fell behind just four minutes into Saturday’s contest when Ryan Loft drove through a huge gap between visiting centre-halves Will Smith and Connor Hall before pulling the ball back for the unmarked Devarn Green to finish from close range.

For the third time in four matches, Josh March won and converted a penalty to draw Town level on 27 minutes, though Alfie Beestin’s hopeful punt over the top somehow caught out 
the Sulphurites’ defence in stoppage -time and Loft ran clear to make it 2-1.

Lewis Spence’s long-range stunner then rounded off the scoring in the 90th minute.

Scunthorpe United: Howard; Clarke, Onariase (Bedeau 77), Taft, Brown; Gilliead, Karacan (Spence 77), Beestin, Green (Van Veen 59); Eisa, Loft (Hallam 84) . Unused substitutes: Watson, Rowe, O’Malley.

Harrogate Town: Belshaw; Burrell, Smith, Hall, Francis; Power (Muldoon 88), Thomson, Falkingham, McPake; Martin (Beck 70), March. Unused substitutes: Minter, Lawlor, Kiernan, Kerry.

Referee: J Busby (Oxfordshire).

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