Chippenham Town manager Gary Horgan was pleased with what his team got out of their second pre-season friendly despite a 4-1 defeat at home to Bristol Rovers.

The League One side took the lead after just six seconds against a Bluebirds side that was a mix of first-team players, academy players, and trialists.

Chippenham levelled the scores through a trialist from the spot, but the league side’s quality shone through, but Horgan felt his side got out of the game what they needed.

He said to BBC Wiltshire post-match: “We split the team across the two halves with a view to making sure we got the right amount of minutes into the boys.

“The boys have done exactly what we have asked of them tonight, we could have sat in and defended the edge of the 18-yard box, which you can do sometimes against league opposition, but we didn’t want to do that.

“We wanted to work on a couple of little things and that it exactly what we did and maybe the decision making at times wasn’t there because we have asked them to hone in on certain things.

“We mixed the squad up and it left us a little bit unbalanced at times, but it was more about getting minutes into the legs of the boys and building up for Saturday to get them 60 minutes and then being ready for the first game of the season.”

In spite of the seemingly one sided score line, Horgan felt that the result did not tell the full story and that the Bluebirds acquitted themselves well against the League One outfit.

He said: “Take away a goal after six seconds, that doesn’t always help and the second one came when we had good possession and in the transition they have gone down the other end and scored straight away.

“They have been absolutely clinical and if you take those two out and then the score line looks a little bit different.

“There were loads of positives, some really good performances particularly in the second-half where for the last 25 minutes we were in control.

“This was the first 45 minutes for the core squad from last year and we didn’t put those players in together, we split them up so that we could look at a couple of other things and use the triallists and the bigger squad that we have got now with the academy boys stepping up to be part of that squad.”