Sampson watched Town go down 2-1 at Corby on Saturday, with first-team boss Stuart Gray away on a coaching mission.

Former players Jason Lee and Lawrie Dudfield were the men who did the damage for the hosts, with the former scoring a trademark header and the latter seeing a deflected shot put the Steelmen 2-0 up after only half an hour.

And the Town assistant manager feels the work-out was something of a backward step following the solid display at Histon four days previously.

"I'm more disappointed with how we did defensively more than anything else," said Sampson, whose team scored through trialist Billy McKay. "I don't just mean the back four, I mean the whole team.

"Our shape and our reaction to turn-over ball was not good, and that meant we were constantly putting ourselves under pressure.

"It was a collectively poor performance defensively, and really we didn't do enough in the final third either.

"We're asking the players to play with the ball and pass it, but sometimes you have to mix your play up a bit and maybe we overplayed it at times.

"You're looking for consistency and maybe it is a bit of a backward step because we did so well at Histon, and we were arguably put under more pressure there, but there's no points won or lost in pre-season."

At least four players who will probably be in the team which kicks off against Macclesfield Town in three weeks started at Corby, and the majority of those who came on as substitutes would also be first-choice picks.

Sampson says the senior professionals weren't kept on the park as a punishment, and that the likes of Luke Guttridge and Andy Holt played 90 minutes in a bid to salvage something from the contest.

"Ideally we'd have liked to have got some of the younger lads on at some stage, but we didn't want to lose the game," he said.

"You would have hoped with the experience we had out there that we would have been able to get back into the game at some stage.

"So it wasn't a punishment but they are our better
players so we left them on to try to get something out of the match."