FAIRFORD Town boss Gareth Davies has blamed the naivety of his players for their 3-2 defeat away to Clanfield.

The Cinder Lane outfit have now not won since the end of October, a run that has seen them slip to third from bottom in the Hellenic League Division One West table.

Lewis Petrie had appeared to have given Davies the perfect start when he netted after just five minutes.

However the lead did not last long and the hosts found themselves 3-1 up going into the break courtesy of goals from Aaron Paparoki, Adam Pendall and Ben Williams.

Dan Thomson scored ten minutes from the end to make the final few minutes interesting but Clanfield clung on to take the points.

“We’re just so naive and it is disappointing,” said Davies who was planning on giving his players a week off for Christmas but will now have them in training on Tuesday night.

“We started off quite bright and went 1-0 up after ten minutes and I think we felt the game was won after ten minutes and unfortunately it doesn’t happen like that.

“When you score the first goal you just need to try and keep the ball and instead of that we have given the ball away easy and conceded a soft goal.

“We gave away a penalty. Ryan (Lathem) I think just lost his bearings, but if you are going to make a challenge like that in the area you’re asking for trouble.

“To concede the third by half time you are not giving yourself any chance at all.

“At half time we said there is something here for them, but we huffed and puffed, Sam has scored with ten minutes to go and it brought the belief back that we could have got something.

“If we had started how we finished I think it might have been a different outcome.”

Fairford will host Cirencester Town Development next weekend and Davies knows that there must be a big change in the attitude of his players if they are to stop the slump.

“We need to grow up a little bit and we have got to grind results out but we are not doing enough.

“We only want to turn it on when we fancy it but half of the time we are not at the races and at this level you have got to start well and if you score first you have got to try and shut-up shop.

“To be where we are now it is tough to get out of it and we need to man up a little bit, we are the only people who can turn it around.”