YORK City assistant manager Tony McMahon admitted that his side gave themselves a 'mountain to climb' after falling to a 3-2 defeat to Torquay United.

A prolific hattrick from Torquay striker Aaron Jarvis meant that Lenell John-Lewis and Adam Crookes' goals weren't enough to claim anything from Plainmoor, with York heading back to North Yorkshire empty-handed.

But after Jarvis struck twice in the opening 21 minutes to place the Gulls in the driving seat, McMahon wasn't pleased with the defending his side produced to challenge Torquay.

“Obviously not the result we wanted." McMahon admitted.

"Torquay have done nothing that we didn’t show the players, we knew that they were going to go direct into the front two, they were going to get runners off of them and get balls into the box, we had to mark, we had to defend and we had to win our one-on-one duels.

"Let’s be honest, we didn’t do it, we didn’t win enough one-on-one duels.

“We spoke before the game about the start being very important, we knew that they were in really good form.

"They were going to come out of the blocks and we had to weather the storm.

"We knew it was going to come, we showed the players and like I said they played direct and Jarvis is in good form.

"The ball runs around Maxim [Kouogun] and that’s what they’re good at, that’s their style of play and that’s what they do.

"We knew we had to stand up to that and in the first 20 minutes we didn’t do that.

"We gifted them two goals and we also gave them another goal, and in football if you do that then you’ve got a mountain to climb."

York did mount the pressure on Torquay, managing 13 shots throughout the contest but struggled to beat Mark Halstead in goal.

“If I showed you the game plan and I showed you the clips of Torquay, you’d see that they can’t defend.

"We went through it this morning, we went over it and we showed them in training.

"You know with Torquay that they do the same, they get it forward and get runners off. We knew that they can’t deal with that.

"That’s where we got our joy. But to give them three goals, you’re asking to score more goals and that’s a big ask for any team.

"We did have chances, and if you want to look at any positive thing it’s that we had chances.

"It flashed across the front, the goalkeeper made a few good saves, we hit the woodwork a few times.

"That’s the only positive, is that we did have chances and I’d be more worried stood here if we didn’t create anything and we just went out with a whimper.

"But I don’t think we did that, we made it interesting in the end but we just gave ourselves a mountain to climb."