IAN Merrick says he was disappointed with the 'manner of the defeat' Ledbury took against Hereford Pegasus.
Ledbury took a 3-0 loss against Hereford, with the lack of matches played by the side recently, being evident throughout.
"The first half was fairly even, but they were the better team hands down," said Merrick. "They went 1-0 up and then we had a couple of opportunities, should've done better.
"The second half, the first 15 or 20 minutes, I thought we had a bit more intensity to our play without really creating anything.
"We had a couple half-chances, and we started pushing more men forwards. They scored two goals in the last 20 minutes on the counter-attack really.
"Hands down they were the better team. It showed that we hadn’t played any football. Especially the first half we were way off it.
"A lot of lads that haven’t played football competitively for at least a month, some lads that haven’t for six, seven, eight weeks. It was abundantly clear very quickly that we were off it."
However, Merrick was keen to credit the impressive display put on by Hereford Pegasus.
"Credit to Pegasus, they have got a good young team, and the way that their manager set them up, we couldn’t deal with them really," he said.
"It is disappointing because we had a full strength squad, only really one missing who you could say would be in the mixer. A disappointing performance, really."
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The game - which was meant to be a home fixture for Ledbury - was reversed to be played at Pegasus' ground, due to the effects of the weather.
Despite being forced to contend with the loss of home-ground advantage, Merrick was still disappointed in the manner of the defeat.
"Losing is a part of football, you never mind losing," he said. "It is just the manner of the defeat.
"I thought we were never really in the game, never really battled and showed that spirit that I expect of our players.
"Not to criticise people, we haven’t had any competitive football and it is very difficult to replicate that, so a lot of our players were playing catch up compared to their players.
"We move on, Saturday is another game, so we just have to chip it off and hopefully start fresh this week."
Merrick's side look ahead to a fixture away at Hereford Ro-Stars - a game they go into as favourites, with Ro-Stars having won just four of their 20 games to this point.
"Pegasus have a better record than Ro-Stars do, but the squad we had for the Pegasus game you would be expecting to win that," said Merrick. "We expect to try and win every game, obviously that doesn’t always work out.
"But you expect to go into every game looking to win. You can’t take anything for granted, it is on an all-weather pitch again, so hopefully the game will be on, we will be looking to play, we go there trying to win like we do every single game.
"Hopefully we can put out another strong squad and go from there."
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