Petersfield Town manager Connor Hoare admitted individual mistakes proved costly after the Rams lost 3-0 at home to Wessex League Premier Division high-fliers AFC Stoneham on Saturday afternoon.

Lewis Nagle gave the visitors the lead on 35 minutes at Love Lane after an even opening.

Duarte Martins added a double in the second half to give the visitors the three points.

“It’s probably become the common theme – especially against the top sides in the league,” said Hoare.

“If you give the ball away centrally then these teams are so fast and so lethal that if they’re anything within 20 yards out with no pressure on the ball they’re probably going to score.

“We definitely made really big mistakes for two of the goals.

“The second goal is a quality counter-attack from the halfway line and they’ve got a top striker.

“They’re a proper side. They’re athletic, well balanced and are as good a side as you’ll see in the league. But it’s three mistakes. We have to learn from it, go again, understand why they happen and how to prevent them happening going forward.

“We’ve been working on things over the past month at least to try to rectify mistakes that happen – doing certain things so they happen less. We’ve worked on it for a solid month on how to prevent it happening.”

The Rams had started the game well for the first 30 minutes, and assistant manager Callum Glen was frustrated to see the game slip away.

“For the first half an hour we looked really good,” said Glen.

“We dominated the ball. To be fair to Stoneham they don’t mind allowing the other team to have the ball. We probably didn’t have as much of a threat as we wanted to but we were comfortable in the game.

“They hadn’t had any chances, and their first chance was the goal that they scored. When you give a team like Stoneham a bit of an up in the game, when potentially it wasn’t going their way, then they pounce on it.

“They took control after that and probably half-time was a good time for us. We spoke at half-time, but then make a naive mistake when we were probably on top again in the game.

“If you’re going to be naive and give the ball away at the back then a team like Stoneham are going to take full advantage.

“They did to be fair to them but it’s not about what they did.

“We shot ourselves in the foot and in the end it cost us – which has happened too much unfortunately.”

Petersfield will host Bournemouth at Love Lane in the Wessex League Premier Division on Saturday afternoon (3pm).