We spoke to striker Richie Bennett ahead of training on Monday to get his thoughts on the disappointing opening day defeat at Exeter.
“It was good to get a goal and get off the mark,” he said. “It was a disappointing result, so I would have taken a win without scoring rather than scoring and losing.
"We’ve got to take as many positives out of the game as we can. It’s early days but we obviously want to get as many points on the board as possible. If we’d got a win on Saturday it would have been a great start.
“All we can do now is get our heads down because it's a big game on Saturday. We’ll look at what went wrong at Exeter, then we'll get on the training field and make it right so we make sure it doesn’t happen again."
“We were all massively disappointed on Saturday," he confirmed. "We just didn’t start the game well. If you start like that and give any team in this league a two goal lead it’s always going to be hard to get anything out of the game. We’ve got to start bright to make sure we give ourselves a good chance of getting three points.
“To be honest, when we were 2-1 down we thought we could get something out of the game. To get the goal back before half time gave us a great chance and it also gave us a lift.
"It felt like we needed to get a goal at the start of the second half and then we could have gone on to get all three points, because we were on top of them. As the game went on it opened up a bit, which meant they got chances, but they couldn’t take one until right at the end. When they got the goal in the last minute it obviously means they killed the game."
On getting a full pre-season under his belt for the first time since joing the club, he told us: “It’s been good for me to get a full pre-season and it was obviously good on a personal level to get a goal on Saturday so that I started the season well in that respect.
"I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and try to get better each day I’m in training. I obviously got the start on Saturday so it’s good that the manager has got a bit of faith in me. It’s up to the lads who got the start on Saturday to keep that shirt and make sure we’re performing. I know there are things I can still get better at, but I’ll keep working hard in training to do that."
And on playing beside Jerry Yates and Hallam Hope as a forward thinking three, he commented: “I played with Hallam all of last season so I know what he’s about, but it’s been good to play with Jerry as well.
"He’s quick and he’s a handful, but we probably didn’t get them both in the game as much as we wanted to on Saturday. We know what they’re about and I’m sure they’ll both be important players for us this season."
Next up for the Blues is their home game against Northampton Town on Saturday.
“I don’t think we’ll dwell on Saturday’s performance too much, because we know where we’ve went wrong," the big forward said. "We’ll have a look at things and try and put right the areas that weren’t what we expected on Saturday.
"Our focus is all on coming into our first home game and getting three points in front of our fans. It's always one to look forward to. Last year we didn’t make Brunton Park a fortress in the way we would have liked.
"I think our away form was actually better than our home form last season. If we’d had a better home record I think we would have been right up there in the play-offs, so that’s something we want to do this season.
"We want teams to come here and think it’s difficult to get anything, so it will be important to get a good start on Saturday and get the crowd behind us."
And with one notch on his tally already, we wondered how many more he will need to reach his season target.
“I don’t really set myself goal targets," he insisted. "I just try and get as many as I can and focus on getting results for the team, because I know everything else will follow.”
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