SWINDON Town head coach Jody Morris says the zonal-marking tactic at set-pieces will continue despite the Robins’ having conceded a goal directly from a corner in both of their previous two games.

Leyton Orient’s Omar Beckles scored the first goal in a 1-1 draw at Brisbane Road from a right-wing corner, while Carlisle United snatched all three points at the County Ground on Saturday after Ryan Edmondson nodded in Owen Moxon’s left-sided delivery in added time.

Town head to Walsall on Tuesday night looking for a victory against a team which is renowned for its creativity from dead-ball situations.

Asked for an explanation on why Swindon set up using the controversial method, Morris said: “It’s personnel-dependant, in my opinion. I – and the people that knew the players before – actually think that zonal marking suits this group.

“Initially, it was looking at data and statistics as well as talking to people like Steve Mildenhall and Gav Gunning on how they saw it. They said they’d had a bit of an upturn defending set-pieces when going zonally.

“If you’ve got people who want to go and stick their head on the ball, you might free up those players to go and do it but make sure everyone else is marked.

“But if you’ve got players who are prone to fouling or losing their markers because they’re not very physical and they get moved about too easily, there’s no point going man for man.”

Confirming that the controversial marking method would continue, Morris said he was keen to continue putting plenty of hard work in as Town aim to hone the tactic rather than switching it for something that would not suit the current crop.

Morris continued: “You’ve got to be a leader, you’ve got to be vocal, and you’ve got to organise people around you. That side of things is certainly lacking in our group at the moment.

“That’s not down to set-up, that’s down to personnel, and it’s something we’ve got to try and improve on.

“There are small tweaks that you might make in terms of positioning, but with what we have at our disposal, I think marking zonally is best for this group.

“We need to get better at that because there have been times where we haven’t conceded but we’ve still got things wrong – we just haven’t been punished.

“I feel more comfortable having solidarity in numbers rather going man-for-man, because there are quite a few things I’ve seen already that would worry me even more doing it that way.”