Horncastle boss upset after heavy loss

The season so far has been a valuable learning curve for Horncastle’s young team, but Rawden and his brother, fellow joint-boss Will, felt on this occasion the performance was far from what the pair have come to expect.

And John says it’s important to quickly move on.

He said: “It was certainly a sobering day to say the least. We were absolutely gutted with the performance and obviously the result, and there aren’t too many positives we can take out of it.

"Ultimately we have to draw a line through it and move on – the lads know how Will and I feel after that performance and they now have to show a reaction in the next game.

"We’ve got a lot of young lads in the group which is fine, and we accept that as long as they learn the lessons.”

Horncastle are due to host Skegness Town Reserves on Wednesday night (9th) before then going to Lincoln United Development on Saturday – the sides currently one place above and one place below them respectively in the league standings.

Rawden added: “Wednesday will be a local derby under the lights and hopefully a good atmosphere and a good game.

"Skegness won on Saturday so they’ll be looking to come and build on that success, particularly as they’ll look at our result and come and expect to get something from us.

"We have to stand up to the test and prove that we’re not the team we were on Saturday and that it was just a blip and out of character.

"But we look forward to the challenge and to two or three games on the bounce as we had two weeks off previously which didn’t really help us, but there’s no excuses.

"We have a run of games coming thick and fast where we can start getting some points on the board and a foothold in the league table.”​