CHIPPENHAM Town boss Mark Collier says the club can no longer afford to rely on their home form after they suffered a 1-0 away defeat to Gloucester City on Monday evening.

After Saturday’s postponement of the home match with Concord Rangers, the Bluebirds made a short trip north in search for their first away win in 135 days.

The visitors’ Jake Jackson came the closest to breaking the deadlock as his early effort crashed against the crossbar before the first half came to an end.

During the interval, Collier warned his side that Gloucester remained a threat from set pieces before sending them out for the second instalment.

With 10 minutes to go, it was a set piece which decided the game as Ethan Moore prodded home from a corner to hand the hosts a 1-0 win.

“I thought we had a good foothold on the game during the first half, in fact I think we were the more dominant side,” said Collier.

“We had a couple of half chances and we were more than comfortable. I said to the players at half time that the game should finish 0-0 at worse because we looked tight and compact.

“However, we were sloppy in the second half. They were dangerous with set pieces because of their side and the quality of their delivery.

“Lo and behold we have been undone by a set piece with 10 minutes to go, which is disappointing because we certainly didn’t deserve to lose the game.

“We came up short in a couple of areas and that is frustrating. We cannot rely on winning our home games.

“Our home form has been outstanding but we need nick a win or some points away from home and Monday night was a good opportunity to do that.”

Next up, Chippenham travel to face Whitehawk, who are on a decent run of form after the Brighton club made wholesale changes.

With a new manager and a new set of players, the south coast side have lost once in their last five games, despite being bottom-of-the-league.

“The issue is they were bottom of the league, way behind everybody and they have just gone on a fantastic run,” said Collier.

“They’ve signed just about every non-league player that you can imagine and I imagine their squad is now a top five squad, so it is definitely a bad time to be going there.

“It’s not a good time to go there and we know that we are in for a difficult game, but we have difficult games every week so that is nothing new for us.”