Notts County head coach Ian Burchnall said the crushing 5-1 defeat at Torquay United must serve as a wake-up call to his side that they will have to earn the right to make the National League play-offs.
Burchnall admitted that his team were second best all over the pitch at Plainmoor, but instead of consigning the nightmare performance to history, he wants to carry it forward as evidence of what will happen if the Magpies are not totally focused on each of the seven games they face until the end of the season.
“We have to take our medicine and bounce back in the remaining games this season,” said a clearly angry and frustrated Burchnall after seeing his team outfought and outclassed by a side in which hat-trick hero Connor Lemonheigh-Evans and two-goal Armani Little were outstanding, linking well with striker Danny Wright to give Notts’ defenders a torrid afternoon.
“It’s a natural response to say let’s leave this performance here and put it behind us, but I’d rather take it with us.
“If we use it right maybe it will be a wake-up call at the right time that kicks us on for the rest of the season because if you don’t turn up every game is tough in this league.
“I want it to hurt and for us to use it as fuel to not let it happen again. We’ve got some big games coming up and we need that mindset.
“We were second best all over the pitch and credit to Torquay, who were on to every second ball and had runners everywhere. We didn’t match them in any department.
“We need to keep that in our mind going forward because if we think we are comfortable just sitting in the play-offs waiting for them to happen then we need to wake up.
“Today felt like a performance like we had come through all the difficult games and we came here thinking we were already comfortably in the play-offs, and we got a shock.”
Despite the heavy defeat, with Kyle Wootton’s excellent goal just a consolation in the end, Notts remain in sixth place, although they have lost ground on several of the teams above them, a blow to their hopes of securing a home semi-final play-off place by finishing in the top three.
“It doesn’t help when you concede two goals in the first 15 minutes, it is an uphill battle,” added Burchnall, who paid tribute to the numerous Notts fans who made the long trip, apologising for letting them down.
“We had to chase the game in the second half and it became very open, which suited them.
Eli Sam misses a big chance, then we score and I’m thinking just stay in the game, because anything can happen. But then we chase it a bit naively and leave ourselves too open, then the third and fourth come quickly - it is a very unfocused performance.”
Notts’ defenders simply couldn’t handle the physicality and hard work of Wright, with Burchnall saying: “We knew they’d have runners off Wright, who was excellent, in Lemonheigh-Evans and Little, and we didn’t match that.
“We know how we want to play but we didn’t get anywhere near that due to Torquay’s intensity, and that’s a huge frustration.
“We were also a little frustrated with their first goal, when Wootton is fouled, and the penalty we should get for the foul on Ruben, but take nothing away from Torquay, they were better than us.”
There was much jubilation on the home bench and among the Torquay fans as the goals continued to flow, but Burchnall did not deny them their celebrations, saying: “I’m sure we would be dancing about as well if we were 5-1 up!”
The win moved the home side up to tenth position and kept their slim hopes of making the play-offs alive, but Burchnall added: “We are sixth in the league, and if you asked Torquay I’m sure they would swap places with us now. We are above them for a reason but today we didn't show it.
“We lost a bit of ground on the top three, which is very frustrating, but we have to take some big lessons from this because we are going to have more games like this where teams are flying out of the traps.”
