Ian Henderson miss summed up U’s afternoon says John Ward

By Dave Gooderham Saturday, January 21, 2012
11:38 PM

JOHN Ward accused his Colchester United side of wasting an opportunity to keep on the coat-tails of the play-off pack.

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Two consecutive home matches against relegation-threatened sides – Scunthorpe and Chesterfield – has yielded just one point.

And today’s 2-1 defeat by bottom club Chesterfield was made worse by the fact their opponents had not won a league match since September.

Ward said: “I am disappointed – after the last two home games really. We had an opportunity to pick up further points and we have missed out.

“Regardless of who we were playing, we haven’t really taken these games by the scruff of the neck which I thought we would – and hoped we would really.

“The one today was disappointing. At half-time, we were ok and played some really good football after coming back to 1-1. As the second half went on and we couldn’t find that opening, we lost that belief that we thought we could get it back.

“We lost it in both boxes. We gave free kicks away which is a strength of theirs as they have some big boys in their team, and in their box we never really looked like scoring from out set-plays.

“They were much more dangerous than we were. That is part of the game we have to get better at.”

Ward was right to point to a ten-minute spell just before half-time when the U’s were well on top after Steven Gillespie had equalised Jack Lester’s early header.

But Josh Thompson’s 44th minute header proved a vital moment, giving Chesterfield something to defend in the second half.

It could have been different had Ian Henderson buried a gilt-edged late chance, firing well wide when clean through.

And Ward added: “We huffed and puffed and didn’t really get in there and then we had that really good opportunity with Ian (Henderson) one-on-one and he took it a little quickly.

“I think that probably summed up the second half for us. We got a bit anxious and I think he did with that opportunity.”