TONY Burman admits his Dartford side paid a heavy price for defensive errors in Saturday’s 3-2 opening day defeat at home to Tamworth.

The Darts were making their first appearance in the Conference since 1986 but found themselves 2-0 down in the first half following strikes from Peter Till and Adam Cunnington.

Elliot Bradbrook scored from a free-kick deep in first half stoppage time to get Dartford right back in it and although they created several opportunities to equalise after the break, they were hit by a quick break which ended with Cunnington adding a stunning third for the visitors.

Substitute Harry Crawford quickly pulled it back to 3-2 but the visitors held on to leave Burman bemoaning his side’s bad luck afterwards.

The Darts boss said: “I’m disappointed we haven’t got three points in all honesty.

“We’ve made three mistakes on the goals and we’ve got punished for them.

“The third goal was a great strike but the first and second goals we’ve let the ball bounce, which is not right, and the second one has taken a deflection off their player when he was closed down.

“To be fair with the third one the ball is played down the line and we haven’t headed it into a decent area so for me it is three mistakes.

“But you can’t fault the lads’ effort and I can’t fault the way they’ve played to be fair. I think we’ve dropped three points.”

Dartford looked the better side in the second half but Burman feels his side need to learn quickly if they are to get results at this level.

He explained: “I thought we were going to get something and deserved to get something but it was not to be.

“That is what is going to happen now, we are up against teams and players who know how to play the game, know how to do things and they’ve got that little bit of a nasty streak in a professional way and we will have to get to learn those little tricks.

“To be honest it could easily have been 2-2 when Lee Noble’s header has just gone past the post and they’ve gone up the other end and made it 3-1.

“We’ve had enough chances and are creating enough still, which is great.

“Hopefully we will get better and on another day our chances would have gone in.”

Burman added: “It means getting into a routine and getting to learn the league very quickly but we will get punished if we make mistakes.

“Today we’ve been punished because we’ve made mistakes, not because it was a bad team performance.

“It was three what I think were poor mistakes.”

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