SOUTHEND United boss Kevin Maher felt the Shrimpers paid the price for not making more of their goalscoring opportunities against Dorking Wanderers.

Blues took an early lead through Harry Cardwell before wasting a number of good chances to score.

And Maher admitted that wastefulness ultimately came back to haunt his side as the hosts hit back to secure a 2-1 win.

“We’re bitterly disappointed to lose the game,” said Maher.

“We were in control after the early goal and we had plenty of chances to make it more comfortable and make it two or three.

“We’ve got to put teams to bed better.

“We spoke about being efficient and ruthless and we were at the start with the goal we took brilliantly.

“But we had some good, good chances we’ve got to score really or at least hit the target with.

“At 1-0 you leave yourself open to something happening and it did.”

Blues gifted Dorking an equaliser towards the end of the first half when a wayward pass from Noor Husin enabled Ryan Seager to fire home.

And Maher was disappointed with the error.

“We want to play out but we don’t want to play silly” said Maher.

“It’s a difficult surface and a straight one into midfield makes it difficult.

“It’s one where we didn’t need to take the risk, especially with the position we were in in the game.”

The Shrimpers found it tough to recover from the setback and looked short of energy in the second half.

Maher concurred: “It looked like that a little bit but it’s not about excuses. We’ve won games but we know what we need and that hasn’t changed.

“We still had a couple of chances in the second half we need to do better with and we’re disappointed to lose it from a set piece.”

Blues will now be looking to bounce back at home to Hartlepool United this weekend.

And Maher will be aiming to get a reaction from his small squad of 15 available players which cannot be added to due to the club’s transfer embargo.

“You see people bringing players in all the time and we’d loved to have done that just to add to the players we’ve already got in the building,” said the Shrimpers boss.

“We made a couple of changes tonight and we’ve got to get players up to speed because they will be needed.

“Everyone went so deep and gave so much energy to get the win on Saturday that we thought a couple of fresh ones coming in would help us.

“It did in the first half and we just needed that second goal to put it to bed.

“Unfortunately we can’t freshen up at the right times but hopefully that will change soon because we need it to.

“But it’s onto Saturday now and we’ve got to respond the way we know we can.”