Hebburn Town fell to a second consecutive home defeat against National League North rivals Scarborough Athletic on Saturday.

Daniel Moore admitted he felt sympathy for his Hebburn Town FC players after they fell to a 2-0 home defeat against National League North rivals Scarborough Athletic.

After a goalless opening half-hour at the Trustmark Group Stadium, the Hornets fell behind seven minutes before half-time when in-form forward Rio Allan kept his cool to produce a cool finish beyond Dan Cameron. Moore’s men were handed a golden opportunity to get back on level-terms on the hour-mark - but were left frustrated when Seadogs keeper Ryan Whitley kept out a penalty from former Newcastle United and Gateshead winger Tom Allan.

Josh Donaldson came close to an equaliser with 20 minutes remaining when he was denied by Whitley - and that set the platform for visitors captain Will Thornton to head home his side’s second of the day to secure all three points and leave Moore to bemoan some individual errors from his players that ensured they have now suffered back-to-back home defeats.

He told the club website: “I feel for the players. I will always say it how it is and it’s not very often I come on here and say when we lose that we didn’t deserve to lose - but we didn’t deserve to lose that game. Individual errors have cost us again so that’s five goals with errors in the last two games. An open conversation there, it’s not good enough to do that in this league, you get found out.

“But even at one-nil down, we missed a penalty, we had two or three unbelievable chances and then sucker punched again - but I can’t fault the performance. I think that’s the best we have played for a few weeks if I am being brutally honest and we deserved something out of the game. My message to the players is we keep going to the next game, move on. I can accept losing when we play that well, we just weren’t good enough in both boxes.”

The Hornets will now look to bounce back to winning ways when they visit AFC Telford United next Saturday afternoon.