Gavin Bazunu insisted there were no excuses for Ireland's poor display in their damaging 2-1 Euro 2024 qualifier defeat to Greece in Athens.
Bazunu made good saves for Ireland early on but conceded from a 14th minute penalty scored by Tasos Bakasetas and while Nathan Collins grabbed a 26th minute equaliser, Giorgos Masouras won the three points for Gus Poyet's side with a 48th minute strike.
The defeat follows the opening qualifier defeat at home to France and effectively rules out hopes of automatic qualification for the finals, but Stephen Kenny must pick his players up for the Aviva Stadium clash with Gibraltar on Monday night.
READ MORE: Stephen Kenny back in firing line as Ireland's Euro 2024 qualification hopes all but end in Athens
Asked afterwards if the long lead in for many of Kenny's players played a part in the sluggish, error-strewn performance, the Southampton netminder said: "Yeah, I mean we're not making any excuses for ourselves, we had a long lead in, we worked hard and we were prepared for the game.
"We just took too long to get into the game, we gave them too much of a foothold and we got punished early on.
"We did well to recover and score but it's a disappointing result.
"Like I said, it was difficult for us to get a foothold in the game and we couldn't work our way up the pitch.
"It hurts a lot right now but we've got another very important game coming so we've got to look forward to that."
The Ireland players had to deal with a laser shone in their eyes during the game, as Bazunu had to before the penalty was taken - but the 21-year-old insisted: "It wasn't affecting me at all.
Bazunu said that Kenny made a "slight change" to the system at half-time, with the introduction of Mikey Johnston for Adam Idah.
But he added: "We needed to up the levels because we were only in second or third gear, we came out much better, we just weren't able to create anything.
"For their second goal, we had them in a good position on the pitch and there was just too much space down the left hand side, it's a poor goal to concede so early in the half as well and it was just an uphill battle from there."
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