ROB Small was left frustrated by Bowers & Pitsea’s performance in their 1-0 pre-season friendly defeat at the hands of Canvey Island.

Josh Hutchinson grabbed the only goal of the contest as Bowers’ Brad Warner missed from the penalty spot.

And Small was less than impressed with his side.

“It was frustrating,” said the Bowers chief.

“With it being our third game of the week, I think it took it out of the players.

“We’re very grateful to Canvey for hosting us but the grass was very long and that made playing football difficult.

“There are a number of mitigating circumstances for our performance, such as a difficult pitch, players being away and the changes we made.

“We played some square pegs in round holes just to try new things but, ultimately, I was still disappointed with the intensity and the desire to win the game.”

And Small believes his players will have learnt a valuable lesson from the reverse at Park Lane.

Small added: “We can hide behind the mitigating circumstances or ask ourselves if we wanted to win badly enough? The answer is we didn’t.

“Because we didn’t, we invited Canvey to get in control of the game and it was very difficult to drag ourselves back into it.

“That’s a lesson for our players and that’s valuable to us.

“I think you learn a lot more when you lose.

“In the grand scheme of things, as disappointed as I am with our performance, it will serve us better having a bad day at the office now. We can learn from that and make sure we improve.”