Swindon manager Mark Kennedy expressed his emotions as ‘bitterly disappointed’ following a 2-1 loss to high-flying Doncaster.

A goal from substitute Harry Smith was not enough for the Robins on Saturday as Joe Ironside’s penalty in stoppage time stole all three points.

“I’m bitterly disappointed, I thought the least we deserved was a draw, that was a real tough one to take.

“I think in my experience of playing games, normally games where we’ve been beaten, the opposition deserve to win.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what’s cost us the game today but there’s huge positives.”

Doncaster were second before the game kicked off and kept their spot in the automatic promotion places whilst Town sit in 21st.

The Robins boss reflected on how he thought his side played and praised the performance.

“I’m not somebody who will come out and pretend I’m really happy because we played well.

“For me, I couldn’t see the difference in the teams, but the bottom line is that we’ve 100% cost ourselves today, so that’s a real tough one to take for sure.

Both goals from the away side came from set-pieces, which has been a common problem for Town this season.

Kennedy claimed it’s down to the roles of players themselves to help cut-out a potential weak spot.

“It’s simple as roles and responsibilities of individuals, it’s as simple as that.

“I don’t think teams dominate us on set-pieces, I don’t think we struggle with that.

“All the goals you look at, they’re really poor errors and the flip side of that is we’ve conceded five set pieces this year and we’ve scored five; we’re actually very good.

“We seem to be very good in one end and through lapses of perhaps concentration, we’ve really let ourselves down today.

“It’s simply down to individual ownership, but we’re all human beings and we’re not robots, let’s be clear about that.”

He continued to reflect on the topic of set pieces and discussed his team’s angle and how Swindon need to be more tough mentally.

“We just have to become a team that becomes hardened and tough mentally in the zone where you think, no problem, 94th minute.

“It’s pretty black and white to be honest, but it’s disappointing. There’s five goals [we’ve conceded from set pieces] which is a lot, but thankfully we’re managing to score a lot ourselves from set pieces.

“But I’d rather it be the other way around where perhaps we were struggling to score set pieces but not conceding because I think there’s an improvement in that.