Steelmen boss Kinniburgh rues 'individual mistakes'

Having already played three matches earlier in the week and securing back-to-back wins along the way, the Steelmen found themselves 4-0 down at half-time in Staffordshire and, despite Steven Leslie pulling one back, they were eventually well beaten.

Kinniburgh was officially confirmed as Corby’s new permanent manager after the game.

And while he admitted there were some “sore bodies” in his squad, he conceded defensive errors were once again costly for his team.

“You look at the squad and it’s obviously very thin,” the Steelmen boss said.

“We had four or five bodies who weren’t here so we started with the same 11 that finished Thursday night and when you’ve played all season and all of a sudden you have seven games in two weeks, it takes a lot out of you.

“But it’s the individual mistakes that have let us down.

“If you are losing goals that are very avoidable, it kills you and then you are fighting the whole time and when your body is sore, it makes it harder to come back from.

“Even in the first half we had lots of positives, we hit the post, they have cleared one off the line and they had two good blocks. We were unlucky to go in with no goals.

“But in our last four games we have conceded 13 goals and scored 11 and that sums the season up. If you take the individual mistakes out of those 13 goals we have conceded you are probably halving it.

“Looking at the last three games, we have somewhere to go. But we just aren’t defending properly and if you don’t defend properly, you are going to get caught out.”

Kinniburgh’s first match as the permanent Steelmen boss will be at Steel Park tomorrow (Monday, 3pm) when they take on local rivals Stamford.

Corby remain five points off the play-off places in the Evo-Stik League South while Graham Drury’s team are fifth and go into the game on the back of a big 6-0 victory over Chasetown.

“We will go again, we have a lot of hurting bodies in there,” Kinniburgh added.

“If we can cut out the individual mistakes, we can cause teams a lot of problems.

“As a defensive unit, we have to be a lot better. We need more leadership on the pitch.

“We had it on Monday (the 3-1 win over Kidsgrove) and Thursday (the 4-1 win at Cleethorpes) but it’s that consistency of wanting to do it week in and week out and game after game after game.”