It wasn’t the fact that his team’s comeback fell just short that troubled Braintree Town manager Danny Searle at Eastleigh but more the mountain they had given themselves to climb in the first place.

The Iron boss was frustrated that his team were unable to build on the win they had had against Salford the week before as a 2-1 defeat left them 11 points from safety at the foot of the Vanarama National League table.

They knew they had chances to get something from their trip to Eastleigh as a penalty was saved and a late effort was cleared off the line, while the hosts played the last 22 minutes with only ten men.

However, it was the way they gifted two almost identical goals to Eastleigh striker Paul McCallum from corners in the opening 17 minutes that taxed the patience of the Iron boss more than anything.

He told BBC Essex: “The planning from before the game went out the window when we decided to give away two easy goals at set pieces.

“We had talked all week about what a danger Paul McCallum was.

“I know him well from his West Ham days and we knew about the set-piece delivery and the quality from Mark Yeates.

“The whole message before the game was ‘let’s not give away silly free-kicks and corners and make sure we are disciplined when we do’.

“But when you give a team like Eastleigh a 2-0 head start, you’re always going to find it tough.

“I think the message in the dressing room has been about silly mistakes costing us and the lads are sick and tired of us always having an uphill battle.

“Over the course of the game, I’d say we deserved something out of it if not three points with the chances we created and the penalty.

“But you still can’t go giving teams a two-goal head start.

“You can’t do that to anyone in the league because you’ll give yourself a real challenge.”

Cameron James got the goal for Braintree that gave them hope of getting at least some reward from their trip, but in the end they were unable to break down a resolute defensive display from their ten-man hosts.

Searle added: “If you’re Eastleigh manager, you’re probably happy with the last 20 minutes.

“I don’t just mean that because they won, but because of the actual chances we created.

“We had one off the line and a couple in and around it but it wasn’t the dominance I would have expected.

“The positives are that we felt we should have got something out of the game and we created a lot of chances, but the negatives are that some of the decision-making at times was horrendous.

“We were 2-1 down with five minutes to go and we had players taking multiple touches in areas where they didn’t need to do it.

“We put our centre back up there to try to cause problems in the penalty area and I could count on one hand the number of times we looked to put the ball in the box.

“Credit to Eastleigh because they had to be resilient and I felt for their manager as there was the sending off for them to deal with and they had injury after injury after injury.

“But they showed resilience and unfortunately, in the first 20 minutes, we didn’t.”