John Flanagan accepted his Curzon Ashton side were ‘second best’ against Chester FC last night.

The Blues got their first National League North win of the campaign thanks to goals from Simon Grand, Anthony Dudley and John Pritchard at the Tameside Stadium.

The Nash got their season off to a flying start on Saturday with an away win over Darlington, while Chester and Spennymoor ended in a goalless draw.

And Curzon boss Flanagan felt the three goals the Blues scored could have been defended better, but also lamented his side not taking their opportunities.

He told the club’s YouTube channel: “We were second best tonight.

“Personally I thought we started the game quite well and we had a great chance to take the lead. It’s very disappointing when against a strong side, that you don’t take your chances.

“We can’t expect everybody to take every chance, it’s not realistic for that to happen, but if we’d had got ahead 1-0, it changes the mentality of everybody on the pitch whether its our players or theirs.

“It was a good chance and we didn’t take it unfortunately. From that point in, they grew and they got stronger.

“We defended really poorly on probably all three goals. Unfortunately, the first one we had designated certain people to pick up certain people – that didn’t happen, so there’s a problem right at the beginning.

“The person that was supposed to be picking up the one that scored the goal got blocked and that’s a bit of naivety on our part.

“Danny has made the mistake of trying to volley the ball away and it’s gone under his leg and their striker, like good strikers do, go in behind and got on to it and hit it underneath the keeper, I think.

“At 2-0, the next goal’s key and if you can get them back to 2-1, all of a sudden, you get some momentum, so that third goal then just finishes the game.”