“You know when you’ve got a five minute powerplay, it’s odds on that they’re going to score one or two, especially a drilled outfit like Sheffield"

“You take the three goals out and it would be 4-4 and it would be a draw rather than a loss.

“This is the problem in this league, the refereeing standards are inconsistent. One thing he’s calling on one team, he’s not calling on another. "

Darren admitted that the final result was hard to stomach after taking such a commanding lead, but paid credit to Sheffield’s fighting spirit in the second and third periods.

On a more positive note, Darren suggested that he now feels his side are ready to play at this level on a regular basis, but insists that he needs to get his team playing for the full 60 minutes.

“Yeah the result was hard to take, especially when we were 4-0 up at one point.

“Fair play to Sheffield though. Second period they came out a different team and they got themselves back in the game and that’s what you want to do.

“When you go in three goals or four goals down you’ve got to get yourselves back in the game and they made changes, so all the best to them.

“We’ve proved that we’re good enough to play at this level, we’ve just got to be able to do it for three periods.
“Its no good going out and having a good first period and stomping a team four or five nil and then letting them back in the game.

“In my honest opinion I think we play better when we go a goal or two down, but we just need to be able to shut up shop when we are in front like that and protect a lead and hopefully go on to win the game, but it’s coming.

“There’s only six games gone and there’s plenty more to go, but a couple more goal scorers would help me out.”

Referee Freeman’s controversial decision to hand captain Adam Andrews a match penalty for roughing after the whistle and awarding the Spartans a five minute powerplay, turned the game on it’s head, with the away side converting three goals.

“It was the same yesterday (Telford),” said Darren. “We dominated a team for the first period and they didn’t know what had hit them. We let them back into the game, but tonight we were fighting a Sheffield side and the referee."

“I’ve said it before. We can’t play five-on-four in this league. All of these teams are pretty drilled on the powerplay and they know how to score on it, but saying that, the inconsistent refereeing has cost us.