Dennis Greene: No excuses for Telford

The Bucks were soundly beaten at Aggborough, extending their winless run at Harriers to eight games. The successive defeat sees Telford join three other sides on nine points at the bottom of National League North.

In-form Harriers proved too strong for an inexperienced Bucks side who were comfortably second best, particularly in a one-way first half.

Telford were short of bodies heading to Worcestershire. With centre-halves Theo Streete and Saul Shotton suspended, left-back Kevin Berkoe had been recalled by Salford.

Greene said: "It was a tough afternoon. Kidderminster are a good side, they played their system really well and were hard to cope with in the first half.

"There were too many crosses into our box, I can't remember how many how many corners there were, we had to defend our box too many times.

"In the end it paid off and they got one from a corner and one from a cross to go in 2-0 at half-time.

"We allowed the ball out wide and into the box too easily."

But, asked about being hamstrung by unavailability, he added: "That was the problem, we had two centre-halves and a left-back missing, we had no left-back so had to play the right-back there.

"Kory (Roberts) wasn't even in the squad last week and had to come in and play centre-half. So we were light in that area, but there is still no excuse, we're playing at this level, we need to be competitive, we need to make things more difficult."

Alex Penny and Ash Hemmings buried first-half headers as Harriers threatened to run wild on a handful of occasions.

But the second half was a tighter affair after a couple of changes, but defender Nathan Cameron was still able to add a third from an uncleared set-piece.

Greene said: "Ross (White) has gone from right to left-back, we need him on the other side for what we've been working at, to widen up the pitch.

"(Tom) Sparrow is a midfielder and he's gone back to right-back. We were taking people out of positions to put them in others to fill. Everything we've been working on has gone out of sync because we've had to compensate. It was square pegs in round holes.

"We knew we were going to suffer today at times, but was hopeful to be competitive for longer, and I mean 0-0 for longer, so maybe later in the game we could try to expose them.

"We changed at half-time, went to a flat 4-4-2, which I think suited us better, we didn't get exposed as much, the crosses and chances stopped.

"Their second-half goal was pretty much cleared I think as Russ has fallen over his feet and they've put the ball in. But the chances (otherwise) stopped, that was important, because you look at it at 2-0 and it could be four, five or six and we don't want that. It was better."

Greene admitted the lacklustre first-half display meant his players required a half-time telling off for the first time in his eight-match tenure. He said: "I gave them a bit of a ticking off at half-time, which is the first time I've had to, because I thought they could've put a little bit more effort in to stop the balls coming in the box.

"I didn't think we'd doubled up well enough and we weren't marking well enough, it should be touch-tight in the box.

"I gave them a little kick up the backside and I thought we did better in the second half."