YORK City boss Sam Collins refused to “hammer” his players despite admitting he was “bitterly disappointed” to throw away a 2-0 lead against Leamington.

Top-scorer Jordan Burrow’s second-half brace had put the Minstermen in the ascendancy at Bootham Crescent, before Colby Bishop responded with a double of his own for the visitors with the second - a free header from a free kick – securing a share of the spoils on 86 minutes.

But Collins insisted it would be counter-productive to give his team a public dressing down, while outlining his dissatisfaction at a failure to get the basics right.

Summarising a frustrating night, the City chief said: “There were players who put in good performances and my job isn’t to hammer them, because that won’t work. A lot of them are under contract until the end of the season and some beyond that and I’m just trying to work with them to improve them.

“There are loads of games still to play and, if we had won, we would have gone tenth and been right in the mix going into Christmas. We played OK during little spells in the first half and they never caused us a problem, other than when we went 2-0 in front.

“I thought we looked really comfortable up to that point and they never looked like scoring, but we didn’t deal with either of their goals very well. It came down to a couple of really, simple basic things that we didn’t do properly.

“I’m not sure if the players took their foot off the gas, but we should never have given them a point from the situation we were in and I’m bitterly disappointed by that.”

Collins has no complaints about the current form of Burrow, however, with the ex-Gateshead striker taking his season’s tally to 11 goals.

“Jordan is somebody who is full of confidence and he’s playing really well,” the Bootham Crescent boss declared. “He’s been right at the top of his game for weeks and weeks now and you need that from seven or eight players in every game – not from just four or five.”

On-loan Port Vale centre-half Joe Davis switched to right back for the match, with teenager Nathan Dyer taken out of the firing line and Joe Tait recalled to the heart of the defence.”

Commenting on the reasons for that switch, Collins explained: “We’ve got to be careful with Nathan and Joe did a fine job at right back. I knew they were a big team who would be direct and I wanted to pick a team that could deal with that, which we did for long periods.”

Veteran former Championship striker Jon Parkin, meanwhile, was left out of a third consecutive matchday squad, with Collins simply stating: “If you’re in the team, you deserve to be in the team and, if you’re not, you don’t deserve to be and there are not many players that haven’t had a chance (since Collins took over as manager).”