BOSS Phil Brown rues missed opportunities as a lapse in concentration saw Swindon Town lose 1-0 to Colchester United.

Swindon travelled to the JobServe Community Stadium in a positive mood after their late comeback win over Notts County last week. 

However, this weekend’s contest with Colchester represented a different challenge entirely as the U’s boasted one of the strongest home records in the League.

They too had a good result a week earlier, as they negotiated their way to a 1-0 win over league-leaders Lincoln City.

For the most part, Town competed well with John McGreal’s side, until a momentary dip in awareness allowed Sammie Szsmodics to crash the ball home from a cross on the stroke of half time. 

The goal came deep into injury time after former Swindon striker Luke Norris was stretchered off with an ankle problem.

In the second half, Brown’s men had the better of the home side, and could make a strong case for a draw or even a win as Martin Smith and Keshi Anderson both wasted chances to get one back for Brown.

While Brown concedes his plan was to frustrate their hosts in the opening 45 minutes, before pressuring in the second, he says he expected his players not to make any defensive mistakes in Essex.

“The game plan wasn’t to go behind and the game plan wasn’t to lose the game, we showed them a little bit of respect,” he said.

“They have won their last four games here and beat the league leaders 1-0, so that shows they have something going here.

“We had a game plan to get a foothold in the game, which was applied to the letter until Luke Norris went down with two minutes of the first half to go.

“Then in the two minutes of extra time, we fell asleep and that appears to be happening week in, week out and that’s not just one player, that is everybody as a collective.

“We have a mentality where we seem to be sleeping in, not focusing and not concentrating for 90 minutes, which is their job.

“Consequently, we gave ourselves that mountain to climb and we started to climb it. Apart from one save and Keshi’s glaring miss, we could have been coming away with one point, if not three.”

Swindon return to the Energy Check County Ground next Saturday, where they face York City in the opening round of the FA Cup.