BOSS John Askey felt his Truro City side’s 2-1 home loss against Gateshead was due to a lacklustre second half showing.

In front of the live television cameras, City started well and two saves inside the opening 20 minutes from Heed custodian Pete Jameson kept the deadlock unbroken.

But very much against the run of play, Harry Chapman opened the scoring for Gateshead before Tyler Harvey restored parity in the 27th minute.

Jameson once again came to Gateshead’s rescue before the break and shortly after the turnaround, Chapman bagged his second with a fine individual strike. City couldn’t force a leveller as they rarely threatened from thereafter and defeat leaves Askey’s troops 11 points adrift and bottom of the National League standings.

“I thought in the first half we were the better team,” he said at full-time. “Then in the second half, with the elements with us, (I thought) we would go on and win the game, if we played like we did in the first half.

“But we didn’t really come out and the two goals that we conceded were poor. In the second half we just didn’t play and even though we had more shots on target than they did, we just huffed and puffed whilst we never got going.”

“Today was one of those games that we had to win and we haven’t. All we can do is look at the game and keep going as our priority is always to get three points.

“We will go into the Eastleigh game (on Wednesday night, 7.45pm) with the sole focus of winning, but if we don’t we know what is coming.

“It will take a lot of guts and determination to turn this round but we won’t be throwing the towel in yet. We need to find a way of improving and in the first half today, we did that as we were sharp, but for whatever reason, fell away after that.”