Alfreton 1-0 FC Halifax Town: We didn't take our chances, bemoans Town boss

Halifax were the better side in the first-half but failed to turn their dominance into a goal, before Craig Westcarr scored the winner after the interval.

Heath said: “It was a good performance in the first-half. Nothing wrong with it. We should have gone in 2-0 or 3-0 up. The keeper doesn’t know anything about Dents’ header. Six inches either side it goes under his arms. We had some other opportunities as well; we played 80 per cent of the game in their half.

“They had very sporadic breaks in our half. But we didn’t quite reach those heights in the second-half. We didn’t dominate as much. And once they scored the goal they’re going to hang onto it for dear life.

“They did very well, they put the ball into areas that made us turn, constantly dropping balls behind us.

“Once we score the first goal then teams have to come out against us. But we didn’t take our chances in the first-half and that’s what cost us.”

When asked why his team didn’t reproduce the same level of performance in the second-half, Heath said: “I think we started to make wrong choices again. In the first-half we were first to 80 per cent of anything that dropped, and it seemed to be more 50-50 in the second-half.

“You’ve got to be first to things, it’s getting the basics right. Once the goal goes in, we put Adam Morgan on but we started panicking, going back to front too quickly, looking for things that aren’t there instead of passing the ball nice and simple, giving it to a blue shirt and moving on. Suddenly we start going long, make wrong decisions, beat one or two players when you can just go round them.”

Strikers Richard Peniket and Adam Morgan were both dropped for the game, with Tom Denton starting up front.

On that decision, Heath said: “Physically their two centre-halves aren’t the biggest. It’s a sticky surface, we knew they’d play 4-3-3 and we didn’t want to get overrun in midfield.

“We wanted to be combative at the start of the game and get on top from the start. We though the best way to do that was to match them up, and we’ve played 4-3-3 a lot of the time this season.

“Richard Peniket has been struggling with a bit of a groin problem, and didn’t train on Thursday last week. Adam Morgan had a back spasm at half-time on Saturday. But Dents is capable, we know that.

“At the end of the day, we’re here to win football matches and we haven’t done that. People will say it’s this or it’s that, but if you were at the game, you’ll have seen that for 45 minutes we were good. We should have been out of sight, but we weren’t.”