SWINDON Town head coach Ben Garner says his team did not defend their box well enough and were punished for lapses in concentration after a humbling 4-1 defeat at Leyton Orient on Tuesday night.

Two goals from the in-form Orient strike-force of Aaron Drinan and Harry Smith saw a 1-1 half-time score turn ugly as Swindon’s unbeaten away league run went up in smoke in the capital.

Harry McKirdy had netted a well-deserved equaliser just before the break, but Town never got going after the restart and were punished at almost every opportunity by Kenny Jackett’s men.

The influential Theo Archibald supplied two excellent crosses for a pair of Orient goals – deliveries which turned the Town defence into statues.

Reacting to the defeat, Garner was disappointed to see his team fail to heed his pre-game warnings.

He said: “It’s disappointing, obviously. I thought in the first half, we were excellent. We had one lapse in concentration where we went one down, but other than that we were very, very good.

“Getting in level at half-time was the least we deserved – we just had lapses in concentration.

“We didn’t defend well enough today, we didn’t defend our box well enough. Their front two are excellent for them, and that was the difference in the game. I think they had seven shots in the game, and they scored with four of them.

“Lots of really good performances in there, lots of positives, which probably sounds strange in a 4-1 defeat, but it was just lapses in concentration that cost us the game.”

Leyton Orient had eight shots in the game and were unflinchingly ruthless in front of goal.

Garner felt his team was uncharacteristically poor at the back – something Swindon have often prided themselves on so far this term.

Garner said: “We have to work a lot harder to stop the cross, and we have to mark tighter in the box and deal with the danger.

“We do an enormous amount of work on that, but we didn’t do it well enough tonight. On the whole, we’ve done it well this season, but for whatever reason we didn’t do that tonight.

“The fourth goal kills the game and takes it away from us, but it’s a foul on Jack Payne. How that doesn’t get given is beyond me, but that was the final nail in the coffin.”