Ottery St Mary boss Dave Fairweather was very honest after his side had been beaten 5-1 at neighbours Tipton St John.

The Otters chief said: “The better side on the day won the match, there’s no escaping that. It might have been a different story had we got what I felt was a ‘nailed on’ penalty when Corey [Ringer] was felled in the area early on, but once that decision went against us it was a case of us being second best in all areas.”

Fairweather was very clear on one particular aspect of the game where he felt his side let themselves down.

He said: “Tracking back is a real problem for us and a number of their [Tipton] goals came about after we failed to track runners. What’s more, the one time we got through them and scored (Adam Harris netted in the first half for the Otters), it was because it was the only time in the contest that Tipton failed to track a runner – and for me, therein lay the difference on the day.”

On a more upbeat note, the Ottery chief added: “That defeat is gone now, we met on Tuesday night and actually had an excellent session when we got a lot of things of various chests! I know I am guilty of repeating myself, but it is an on-going problem in as much as too many of our lads do not seem to want to take their individual performance out of the comfort zone. That’s a real issue for it means that if we are not prepared for a battle, not ready to step pout of a comfort zone and mix it, then we will suffer, as we have been doing in recent games.”

He continued: “However, as bad as we were at time against Tipton on Saturday, in the Tuesday night training session we were excellent and, as I have said to the lads many times before, we need to get into a mind set that you train as you play, with great intensity and plenty of hard creative work.”

There’s no game for the Otters this week and they have just one more before Christmas with a December 16 Washbrook Meadow meeting with Countess Wear.

The Otters will go into that game – their 11th of the season – sitting in the lower reaches of the Macron League Division Three table with 10 points to their name and a goals against column of 29!

Fairweather says: “There are still 16 games to go and even though we are on a bad run currently, I remain convinced that we have sufficient quality in the squad to still have a big say in this season’s promotion picture.