WEYMOUTH manager Mark Molesley felt his players suffered from “stage-fright” in their 1-0 Evo-Stik Southern League Premier loss to St Ives at the Bob Lucas Stadium on Saturday.
The Terras’ boss also conceded that his side had not lived up to pre-season standards.
He told Echosport: “We’re obviously disappointed from our point of view, we’ve had a good pre-season, showed a lot of potential and we didn’t realise that today.
“We always knew it was going to be a difficult game, opening day, there’s obviously a bit more nerves, maybe there’s a tiny bit of stage-fright in there today where everyone was waiting for the season.”
Molesley hinted that the Terras might encounter more playing approaches like St Ives’ as the season endures.
“They were always going to make it difficult, they cleared their lines well, they got people behind the ball and frustrated us.
“They’re challenges that we’ve got to overcome, they’re things that are going to happen regularly to us here. Hopefully it might be a little bit of a reality check for us and luckily a game comes on Wednesday where we can try and put things right.”
And Molesley was disappointed that a poor performance came during the season, rather than before it. He said: “It was really disappointing. The bad performance has come. We’d have rather seen it in pre-season than on the first day of the season but it has come and it’s just how we react. We’ll find out more about ourselves on Wednesday. We’ve got everything to prove, no-one’s done anything and we fell short today and we’ve got to respond.”
