Blog: The players couldn’t handle the tag of favourites and simply choked on the big occasion, writes Shrewsbury Town blogger James Pugh.

Confidence was high among fans going into Saturday’s play-off semi-final away at Torquay, but few could have expected us to play so badly.

Torquay deserved their 2-0 win, not because they showed a lot more quality than us, but because they seemed to want it more and fought for everything for 90 minutes.

We hardly created any chances, we gave the ball away too easily and we defended poorly. Not a recipe that is going to bring you success.

It means we head into Friday’s return fixture as underdogs and face an uphill struggle to reach the play-off final.

So why were we so bad? Maybe we under-estimated the opposition, did we collapse under the pressure or did we just have an off day?

The injury to captain Ian Sharps didn’t help. We looked very vulnerable at the back with a lack of organisation, and our inspirational captain was a miss.

He is now a big doubt for Friday’s game and his experience will be a big loss if he fails to play.

Now for some optimism. We have the players to beat Torquay on Friday. We have home advantage and will be backed by a large, noisy crowd.

We will have to be on top of our game and will have to be very positive from the kick-off.

My prediction: a 2-0 Town win with us sneaking through on penalties.