Southend United manager Alvin Martin was left questioning his players' hunger and commitment after Monday's 2-0 defeat at the hands of a very average Torquay United side.

The Shrimpers chief must have been praying that his side had put their indifferent form of this season behind them following back-to-back wins against Hartlepool and Peterborough.

However, it was an all too familiar scene at Plainmoor yesterday as the Blues boss locked his players in the visitors' dressing room for more than hour after the final whistle to sift through the wreckage of another alarming collapse.

"We lacked the fight, commitment and zest to earn anything from this game right from the kick-off," Martin admitted.

"I was very disappointed with my players and the way we played following all the hard work we have put in during our last two games to pick up vital wins, but today we went backwards and paid the ultimate price."

Goalkeeper Neville Southall, who played nine league games for Southend last season, condemned Blues to defeat with two excellent second-half saves.

However, Martin said his men were beaten well before the former Everton keeper's intervention.

"You would never have believed that we had travelled down to Torquay on the back of two wins because we never looked like a side who were playing with any confidence," Martin said.

"We started the game very badly, we never passed the ball around with any purpose, we didn't defend solidly and we couldn't hurt them because we never provided any service for our forwards.

"After our sluggish start we deserved to go in at half-time a goal down and even though we improved after the break we still didn't really get at Torquay's defence. Our overall performance wasn't good enough and we will need to improve drastically before our next game."

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.