INTERIM manager Noel Hunt criticised his team for “making the same old mistakes” following Swindon Town’s embarrassing 2-1 defeat to Darlington in the first round of the FA Cup on Saturday.

Adam Campbell took advantage of Jonathan Grounds’ mistake to nudge the National League North outfit in front after half an hour.

Brett Pitman equalised shortly before half-time as Swindon looked to avoid being on the wrong end of a giant-killing.

However, Campbell’s heavily deflected strike off Grounds saw the Quakers re-take the lead on the hour – and it was an advantage that Darlington never looked in any danger of losing late on.

Asked very simply how a result like that could have happened, Hunt said: “It happens when you give away sloppy, silly, easy goals.

“You’ve seen it again on Saturday, we keep on making the same mistakes and it’s got to change.

“You’ve got to live and learn in this game, these boys have got to recognise there are consequences for performances like that.

“That can’t happen – both goals we’ve given away are too easy, they’re too soft.”

Not only was the fact that Town conceded twice to Darlington in soft fashion a worry for Hunt, but the Irishman felt his side did not do enough going forward either.

The hosts spent the last half an hour creating very little and only forced Darlington 'keeper Jonathan Saltmer into one save during the second half.

Hunt said: “I felt we should have scored twice before we gifted them the first goal – Ellis Iandolo’s header, I felt he should have done better, and Joel Grant should be scoring his one-on-one.

“If we’d scored them, the game would have been totally different.

“We didn’t, and then we gift them a goal with the short back pass. Something we spoke about all week and said we weren’t going to do.”

“I’m just very disappointed with how the performance went.”