SWINTON LIONS coach Anthony Murray bemoaned his side’s errors after falling to a late defeat at Halifax Panthers on Sunday.
The Lions, who trailed 16-6 at half-time, wrestled the score back to 22-22 with a quarter of an hour left to play, but conceded a Darius Carter penalty-goal before Ben Crooks’ 75th-minute try put the nail in their coffin.
A converted Jesse Soric try inside the final minute had proved Swinton’s undoing in a 24-22 defeat to Halifax last month, with Murray disappointed to see another game slip away from his side after earning back-to-back wins on the road.
“Referees make mistakes, players make mistakes, coaches make mistakes, and I don’t look at that now,” he admitted after seeing his side give away 11 penalties.
“I look at other things that we’ve done throughout the game that we could have been better on.
“The referee doesn’t knock-on on their try line, doesn’t give silly penalties away when they clearly are penalties, so for me, it’s about us fixing our errors up.
“Was the penalty a bit harsh? Yes, potentially. But we still put ourselves in a position after that to clearly get something out of the game and to win, and we weren’t clinical enough.
“For me, that was the area that we came unstuck a little bit. There were a couple of plays in good ball where we had Halifax on the rack.
“You can’t keep doing that to the better teams in this division, where we’re giving them a little bit of a leg-up, then letting them build a little bit of momentum when we’re pulling ourselves back into the game, because that burns energy.
“It was a good game for the neutral, but again a game that got away from us, which I’m a bit disappointed about.”