Maidenhead 3-0 FC Halifax Town: Fullarton laments '˜bitterly disappointing' display

Halifax were 3-0 down by half-time after a terrible first-half display in which two goals by Josh Kelly and another from Adrian Clifton handed Maidenhead an unassailable lead.

Fullarton was left bitterly disappointed by the performance, and especially the manner of Maidenhead’s goals, two of which came from crosses that weren’t dealt with, and another from a long pass that was flicked on and left the Town defence badly exposed.

“All three goals could have, should have, would have been prevented,” Fularton said.

“We are bitterly disappointed with that.

“The positive from it is we will not perform as bad and make the mistakes we’ve made, where we’ve been punished for those mistakes, in any other game this season I would suggest.”

Fullarton admitted his side’s defensive frailties left them with a mountain to climb.

“We got what we deserved, we didn’t merit anything else,” he said.

“When you start the game like we did and you concede the goals that we conceded, then you can’t expect to win games in this league, you just can’t.

“Unfortunately it meant we put ourselves in a virtually impossible position being 3-0 down at half-time.

“There was a spark of improvement second-half, but that was coupled with our approach as well as theirs, which changed and helped shift the second-half slightly in our favour, but still without performing as we have done in the previous 10 games.”

Fullarton said Maidenhead played well, but that his team simply did not perform.

“What you do as a manager is you assess, you do your due diligence on the opposition so you know exactly what to expect, and they’re no different from what I expected, or how they were explained how they would be to the players,” said the Town boss.

“Great credit to them, they did what they do well, but we never combatted that and never performed both against the ball and with the ball.

“It was bitterly disappointing, but it’s not just me that’s bitterly disappointed. The players understand it.

“There’s only two things I expect and it’s attitude and application, and I felt we let ourselves down in the first-half in that, coupled by poor goals that we lost.

“That’s nothing to do with coaching, that’s nothing to do with organisation. It doesn’t matter how good or bad a coach you are, you can’t legislate for such things.

“And that put us in a predicament at half-time and has resulted in us leaving with no points.”

When asked why his side had been so poor, Fullarton said: “There’s 46 games and the preparation and approach is the same.

“As a coach, as a staff, as a club, what we do, we take away any reason not to perform.

“It’s not acceptable for the standards we’ve set and you cannot win games in this division by giving goals away like we did in the first-half, it’s a basic fact.

“You cannot give three goals away like we did in the first-half, in the manner that we did, and the reason we gave the goals away, and expect to win games.

“The performance was out-of-character for the group, and how they’ve performed.

“Is there any logical reason for that? No there’s not.

“If we play that game another nine times, I would make the suggestion that we would not concede goals in that manner in another nine games against the same team.

“But at the end of the day, we weren’t good enough, and I’m judging that on us, not Maidenhead. We weren’t good enough, for whatever reason, in that first-half, and that meant we came away with no points, which is disappointing.”

Fullarton confirmed that left-back Joe Skarz suffered an ankle injury in the game, which forced him off towards the end.

“Fortunately we had Ryan (Sellers) to come on, which is a bonus to be able to give him some game time after he also got injured,” Fullarton added.