Spineless, ignorant and arrogant were the words used by Old Albanian’s head coach to describe his side’s second-half performance in a blow out loss to Hartpury College on Saturday.

Andy Holloway’s side conceded 14 points early at Woollams but came back with three tries in five minutes, two from man of the match Sam Lunnon and one from Brett McNamee, plus another from Mike Allan, to lead 24-19 at the break.

The second-half was all one-way traffic as time after time Hartpury breezed past and through tackles to score 40 points and put OAs on the brink of relegation from National League One.

“There was a huge chunk of the second half where the team didn’t apply themselves at all,” said Holloway. “There were certain aspects and principles of our defence that we worked on and how they were going to attack wand we point blank didn’t do it or went against it.

“It was ignorant and arrogant that we thought we could get away from it. The number of missed one-on-one tackles, we were spineless.

“Given we know how important and desperate we had to be, we rolled over the in the second half and that’s the most disappointing thing.”

It could have been so different had OAs had built on their impressive showing in the first half, making what did transpire that much more difficult to take for Holloway.

“We scored three quick tries, were up at half-time and I’m thinking ‘maybe if we score next, we’re looking ok’,” admitted Holloway. “Then we gave away two unbelievably soft tries; and what followed was pathetic.

“It was almost like those to quick scores were a knockout punch to us. You could see body language of the lads droop.”

The loss saw OAs drop into the relegation zone as Cinderford, who picked up five points against Richmond, leapfrogged them.

“We’ve put ourselves in a position that we have to win two games to stay up. The lads have to get over this quickly,” insisted Holloway.