CUMNOCK Juniors boss Stephen Swift says he hopes his players learn after a challenging second week of the West of Scotland Football League (WoSFL) Premier Division season.

The Townhead Park side suffered a pair of defeats, first losing to Largs Thistle in midweek.

A William Sewell hat-trick was enough to for the North Ayrshire outfit all three points from their trip to East Ayrshire as they picked up a 3-1 win.

And Cumnock tasted defeat once again on Saturday with rivals Auchinleck Talbot coming from behind and scoring an 89th minute winner to claim derby bragging rights at Beechwood Park.

Swift commented: “The last couple of games have been really sore. I think in the Largs game we have no complaints.

“We didn’t approach the game in the right way, I think it was an eye opener for some of the players in terms of how tough the league is and how big a scalp some of the teams will make us.

“Largs came with bags of energy and really deserved their win on the night.”

Though the Cumnock boss was left feeling robbed following the defeat at Beechwood Park at the weekend.

Swift added: “In terms of Saturday, I thought we were a good distance ahead of Talbot and we should have taken our chances to kill the game off – but we didn’t.

“That’s probably the sorest one to take because I think we dominated the game for a big part of it.

“At one point I’ve turned round, after we had a shot just before they scored, and said that they’ve got away with one getting a draw.

“Then they’ve managed to sneak a win, I thought a draw was bad enough but for them to sneak a win was daylight robbery.”

It was a first experience of the famous derby fixture for the new Townhead Park boss, who was impressed with how his side handled the occasion.

Swift said: “We enjoyed it, you expect the rivalry to be there and I thought it was exactly that. I thought my players approached the game the right way in terms of making it a derby.

“We played the best football, we had the aggression, I thought we were stronger and faster than them in most departments.

“On another day, we run out comfortable winners but they took the two chances they had and it was a real sickener.

“In football, it’s one of the sorest ones I’ve had because my team were well the better team.

“But we never got our rewards and that’s football sometimes, we just need to bounce back.”

(Image: Craig McGhee)

Despite his disappointment in the result, Swift is now hoping his side use the disappointment to kick on in the coming weeks.

He added: “I think they’ll learn a lot from these last two games. As much as you don’t want to lose games of football, I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned.

“You learn a lot in defeat and I think the players will now sit up and take notice of how difficult it is.

“You’re constantly having to defend, teams ask questions of you all the time – we need to take chances, we need to be more ruthless when we are getting these spells. We need to make it count and defend better when those questions are asked.”

It is a message he says he will be hammering home with his players as they prepare for their next fixture - another derby match at home to Glenafton on Saturday, August 10 (KO 2pm).

Swift continued: “There are so many positives from Saturday as well, you can sit here and feel deflated but we went to Talbot and not many Cumnock teams in the past would go and dominate the way we did.

“There are elements to be positive. It is a brand new team, you’ve got to be realistic, was it always going to click right away? Maybe not.

“We knew there was going to be bumps in the road so we’ve got to take them and move forward.”