SWINDON Town defender Jonathan Grounds said he and his teammates let certain people down following a disappointing 2-1 defeat against Burton Albion on Easter Monday.

Either side of Jack Payne’s excellent strike late on in the first half, the Brewers scored two very similar goals to ensure the three points remained in Derbyshire.

First, Jonny Smith’s free-kick from the left was headed in by Tom Hamer before substitute Joe Powell whipped in an inviting cross – again from a dead-ball situation down the left – for captain John Brayford to power home in the 83rd minute.

Asked what the mood of the dressing room was like immediately after the full-time whistle, Grounds said: “We didn’t talk about what went wrong, it was quite a quiet dressing room immediately after. It is quite a young dressing room, but we’ve let people down by not doing the things we should have done and the things we worked on yesterday.

“Everybody in that dressing room – the players – have to look at themselves and ask themselves if they did enough against Burton. Only individuals can answer that question really.”

The manner of both goals frustrated Town’s senior defender, as well as his manager, with Grounds claiming the team had failed to act on the advice they had been given surrounding Burton’s set-piece threats.

The Thornaby-born centre-back revealed significant work has been carried out in training on the Sunday so that each player was aware of how best to stop Burton from creating chances.

But Grounds admitted the preparation could not have been better by Town’s coaching staff and stated the reason Swindon travelled back home with no points was simply down to poor technique.

He said: “Sometimes you will give away throw-ins when you’re challenging for headers and tackles, but the majority of the time against Burton it was down to technique because our clearances weren’t good enough.

“You could take the weather into consideration, but it’s just an excuse really. If you have the right technique and don’t slash at the ball to make good contact, you’re going to get the ball up the pitch.

“We probably didn’t do that well enough in both halves and gave away too many throw ins.

“But they didn’t end up being the problem – we dealt with them OK – it was the two wide free-kicks where we gave the goals away.”