WE WERE as bad in the second half as we were good in the first half.

I thought we should have been two or three up at the break but our forward play in the second half was poor and our three midfielders lost their way completely.

They could not cope with Banbury’s spell of dominance – they did not look themselves. Having said that, I could not see Banbury getting past Chris Thompson, Matt Sysum or Matt Bulman. However, when you keep getting into the danger areas, I guess a ball is eventually going to drop to one of your players.

Even then, Carl Brown should have finished them off late in the second half, before they got their equaliser, when he was clean through.

Hopefully, it will be a good lesson because had they approached the tough early games ahead against Windsor, Chippenham and Halesowen on the back of a decent win, they may have been a little too cocksure.

I kept with 4-4-3 because it had worked well for us in pre-season and things only turned around at Forest Green when we went 4-4-2.

Nathan Davies was left on the bench because our trio of midfielders had done so well for us in pre-season. But they are all very young and we will need Nathan’s experience sooner rather than later.

I chose Matt Sysum at centre half over Lyndon Tomkins because he has been a little better in the warm-up games.

We will learn a lot about the team in Saturday’s game at Chippenham. I see them as being the yardstick in this league.

Jody Bevan now has dual registration with Shortwood because he can see there are forwards ahead of him in the pecking order here and he wants to play games. But he will continue to train with us and if there are game clashes, he is a Cirencester Town player.

Ben Gascoyne is only a week away from being fit and could even be involved on Saturday. Scott Griffin is much further away and after suffering a small fracture to his foot he has a choice to make – whether to play through the pain or take some time off to let it recover. He also has the problem that he has not had a pre-season.