Those were the words echoed by the suspended Grant Black (pictured), who watched from the stands as he argued that the Nailers might have come away with a positive result from the Silver X Stadium.

“It was a game of two halves - they bossed the first half which we were very disappointed about.

“In the second half we’ve created enough chances to win three games let alone one,” said Black, as his side fell to a second successive league defeat.

Belper took a battering for 45 minutes as Tadcaster took charge of the half and went into the break with the points seemingly wrapped up.

Billy Whitehouse tapped in a soft first, before a fine direct free kick swept in by Patrick Miller although the free kick award was less than pleasing from the Belper manager’s perspective.

“They started brighter than us, created chances and took two of them. One was a very disappointing goal and as for the the other, I don’t know what the referee was doing to be honest. It’s a catalogue of errors from his point of view.

“Their player has taken a good free kick, but it wasn’t a foul, it’s was not a penalty and it wasn’t even a free kick – to be honest that’s a hard one to take.”

A triple change on the restart for Belper at least produced a positive response.

The openings carved out by the Nailers should have secured at least a point, yet Joe Lumsden made sure that wasn’t a case after a finished a Tadcaster counter.

Piteu Crouz converted a late consolation penalty, before Jake Sturgess saw two yellow cards and a dismissal.

Black said, “The second half was a good performance, what we expect in fact, but it’s no good chasing at 2-0 , we’ve got to start at 3 o’clock.”

On those substitutions, the Belper manager admitted that they needed something different.

“We put Alex Peterson up top, brought Kai Hancock on with and Rikki Paylor and it made a difference. We put them under pressure, we put them into areas they didn’t want to be in.”

As the final whistle blew, Belper had been given a warning on how tight the race for promotion is going to be.

Black was more than aware of the marathon ahead, saying “We are punching above our weight - nobody will deny that. Every game is going to be hard at this level and you’ve got to be prepared every single game as there are no poor teams in this division.”

“You’re four points from second place in the league then four points from 14th or 15th and that’s the same for seven or eight teams.

Another of the promotion-fancied teams, Frickley Athletic await Belper on the road next weekend and the manager said, “They’re in a similar position to us, they’ve huffed and puffed, and they had a good run and a bad run.

“They’re in a bad run at the minute, so changing the manager can be good sometimes but not always.”

“We’ll go there and approach every game as we always do. We’ll try and win a football match and for me, the three points are a necessity if we are going to be amongst the pack going into Christmas.”