SWINDON Robins team manager Alun Rossiter says his team can’t afford to be giving teams too many head starts after his side became the first this season to leave Beaumont Park empty handed.

Swindon suffered a 50-42 defeat to Leicester Lions to hand the hosts their first win of the campaign and leave Rossiter bemoaning another slow start on the road.

The home side had a 10-point advantage by the time Nicolai Klindt was taking the chequered flag in heat number five.

Swindon were able to reduce the deficit as the night progressed and had the chance to claim a losing bonus point going into heat 15 but that was not seized upon and Rossiter says his side need to be more game smart.

“We should have got something out of the meeting,” he said.

“We have got to be a little bit more clinical at the beginning of a meeting.

“We got smoked at Poole and after heat 10 we can back into it and it was the same tonight – we can’t give other teams 10 heat starts on us.

“It was a bad start and then we had nothing to come back through.

“I put it a little bit down to a lack of meetings and we were just poor out of the starts.

“In fairness, if you don’t make a start here, even Jason Doyle couldn’t pass tonight and he is a world class rider, but we can’t be making excuses.

“Josh (Grajczonek) changed he bike for the last race and he should have changed it before then.

“I told him to change it but it is not down to me to make that decision, he has been around long enough to make a decision and know that he is that slow that he has got to make a change.

“Rohan (Tungate) didn’t do too badly and Doyle did alright, while Justin Sedgmen did his job at number two – if I get five points out of him every meeting I would be happy with that.

“The two-week break didn’t help either but I am not making excuses, we got beat by the better team on the night.

“They were a lot quicker and a lot shaper out of the start and we have got to learn from it.”

The Robins have no time to dwell on the result as they return to action tonight against Wolverhampton Wolves and Rossiter is demanding an improvement to prevent back-to-back defeats for the first time this campaign.

“We just need to get our heads up now and get ready for Wolves,” he added.

“It is going to be tough against Wolves and if we gate like we did here we will get beat, as simple as that.

“The quick turnaround probably helps us because a few of the guys will be smarting knowing that they could have done better.

“We have just got to move forward. I don’t need to tell them what they need to do, they need to go and figure it out for themselves.

“Our gating is very poor and we need to put that right.”