Mixed emotions for Goode but skipper says Cobblers 'will come back stronger'

Goode broke the deadlock with a well-taken first-half strike at St James Park but City fought back through goals from Randall Williams, Alex Fisher and Aaron Martin.

Sam Hoskins' late strike was nothing more than a consolation and afterwards Goode admitted to being frustrated at the manner of Exeter's goals.

He said: "We'll look at the goals we conceded and we'll try and get better but we showed a lot of character towards the end and at 3-2 I thought we'd get something from the game.

"All the goals have come from set-pieces and that's something we're normally really good at, both for and against us.

"I think we switched off from the short corner and that's not usually us so we're frustrated, but we'll analyse those little errors and I'm sure we'll come back a lot stronger."

The defeat ended Town's unbeaten run but Goode felt the way in which his side pushed their second-placed hosts all the way shows improvement.

He added: "The second-half the fans really got behind them and we knew it would be a tough place to play but to be honest I thought we matched them all over, aside from that mad five minutes when we conceded two goals.

"Take that out of the game and we were a match for them, but we've been on a really good run and we've come up against a team fighting in the same area of the table as us and I think we showed we're a very good team in this league."

Cobblers were staring down the barrel of a potentially heavy defeat when Exeter scored twice in two minutes, however they responded well to dominate the last 20 minutes and nearly pinch something out of the game.

Goode continued: "At 3-1 we were very disappointed because they scored two quick goals, but we kept repeating that there were 20 minutes left and that's a long time in football.

"When Hosko scored his goal I fancied us to go and get something, but as we've spoken about in the changing room, probably two months ago we might have gone on to lose that game by four or five.

"But we've got a bit more character now and we're playing a way that's working for us and we went right until the end. On another day, we might have nicked something."