Brad Barry admitted his frustration in the wake of Town’s 1-1 draw with Shrewsbury Town on Saturday and gave an honest assessment of his side’s performance.
The Reds were forced to settle for a share of the spoils at SN1 despite taking the lead through John Goddard’s second-half penalty.
However, James Brophy’s sending-off for two bookable offences worked in the Shrews’ favour and they rescued a point late on courtesy of Mat Sadler’s controversial header.
It was very much a case of two points dropped for the Reds who were unable to pull away from the bottom of the table, and Barry admitted that he and his team-mates need to learn how to see a game out.
“It is a disappointing result, especially as we were 1-0 up with eleven men but it is just one of those things and if you don’t see the full 90 minutes through in this league then you do get punished,” he said.
“It is another disappointing result for us and we wanted all three points.
“We should have sat back, controlled the game a bit more, passed it around and made them put more into their legs.
“We need to be more mature with things like that as well but that will come with this group because we’re all working together every day – we will get there.
“If we control the game then we will score because we’ve got that about us and we do it every day in training. We just wait and wait and wait and then we find the gaps, especially at 1-0 up because we’ve got everything to lose and they’ve got nothing to lose.
“We’ve got to work on that.
“We know in ourselves that we are too good to be down at the bottom of the table but we’ve just got to find results and as a team we need to see out a 1-0 win and we’ll climb up the table.
“It was a disappointing result for everyone and we feel for the fans because we want to win and we want to make everyone happy because we are one big family.
“We go on and we look forward to the week ahead.”
Barry is now focused on next weekend’s test away at Bolton Wanderers and is looking forward to the trip to the Macron Stadium.
“It will be a good experience for all of us,” he continued.
“It is a big ground and I’ve been watching Bolton since I was little so it will be a great experience and a good test for us.”
Finally, the defender feels that he learned plenty during his time out of the side by watching former loanee Darnell Furlong, who has recently returned to parent club QPR.
“Darnell is a talented player and sometimes it is good for a player to come out and watch other players because you can learn off them and you learn off each other,” he added.
“It is obviously competition but it is nice to know that there is a battle in there.
“I thought I did alright against Shrewsbury, I was solid but I just need to work on the fitness because I’ve been out for a month and half – it will come.”
