Brighton 2 Northampton 1

Stuart Gray and his team left the Brighton pitch bruised and bloodied, wondering how they lost a match they had dominated for large periods.

The Cobblers have faced two poor teams so far this season and they have failed to win against either of them. This must make them an even poorer team. Despite a disastrous start against Brighton, Town dominated for large periods of the game. But they lacked the quality and concentration to go on and win the game.

300 Cobblers fans braved the weather and extortionate prices at the athletics track that is the Withdean Stadium. They witnessed a nightmare start as captain Doig conceded a penalty on 49 seconds, with a mistimed tackle on Alex Ravel. Hammond scored from the spot kick.

Clearly unsettled by the goal, the Cobblers were very slow to start. After 10 minutes they did begin to dominate and Kirk`s equaliser on 23 minutes came from a period of Cobblers` sustained pressure. Jason Crowe whipped in a cross to Kirk from Bradley Johnson`s weighted pass. Kirk met the cross with a fine header that went in off the post. Immediately from the restart Cobblers` lack of concentration allowed Hammond a chance to score, but he couldn`t take advantage of poor marking.

Cobblers dominated the rest of the first half. Brighton found the Kirk-Hubertz partnership difficult to deal with. Overall Brighton`s defending was poor but the Cobblers failed to capitalise on their pressure. Really the Cobblers should have gone in 2 goals up at half time.

The beginning of the second half also saw the Cobblers dominate, again without an end result. Frustration was starting to show and the game became very heated. Hubertz was booked for persistent fouling, despite the fact he was bleeding from a wound inflicted by a Brighton elbow. Mark Hughes was also booked as he was challenging the ref, Mr Thorpe, asking why he wasn`t punishing Brighton`s use of elbows. As the Cobbler`s players concentrated on the ref they forgot to defend resulting in Brighton taking the lead on 66 minutes with Revell.

yan Gilligan and Daniel Jones were also booked as the discipline and concentration of Gray`s young team deteriorated.

In his post match interview with Radio Northampton Gray commented: ‘A couple of our players came off in the second half with cuts and were bleeding after challenges that the referee said he hadn’t noticed and a few of our players ended up getting a bit frustrated with the referee” ‘We let the referees decisions in the second half get to us mentally and stopped doing all the good things that we had done in the first half. At the end of the day you can’t change what the referee does but you can change what you do.”

Certainly the team needs to be far more ruthless and focussed on the game. Let`s hope that it`s a lesson the team has learnt and that when they play another team that tries to rough them up they get on with the game.