DEFENDER Chris Mepham is “desperate” to make a difference for Cherries after sealing his return from injury and admitted: “There’s nothing more frustrating than being on the sidelines.”

The Wales international played 45 minutes for Jason Tindall’s men – coming off the bench in Tuesday night’s 1-0 defeat to Derby County.

Mepham was introduced by the Cherries boss in place of Cameron Carter-Vickers, with the Dorset club already a goal down at the interval.

It was the 24-year-old’s first appearance since sustaining a calf problem in a 0-0 draw at Swansea back in December – an injury which saw him out of action for seven league games.

Mepham told the Daily Echo: “It’s been a frustrating month or two for me.

“Coming back from my knee injuries over last season, I thought I had put that behind me and had a good run of games up until this injury.

“I have had a bit of time away now to make sure my (calf) injury is right.

“I am desperate to get back out there and hopefully contribute in a positive way to the team, to help them get the wins that we are after.

“There’s nothing more frustrating than being on the sidelines watching your team-mates go out on a matchday.

“It’s even harder when the team is not doing well because you want to contribute in one way – for the past couple weeks I hadn’t been able to do that.

“Hopefully, I am in a position now where I stay fit.”

Krystian Bielik bundled the ball home following a corner for the Rams at Pride Park, to seal the spoils and leave Cherries with just one point from three league games.

Mepham added: “It was obviously frustrating. We are disappointed with the performance and disappointed with the result.

“First half you are on the sideline and watching it all happen. We are so much better than that.

“You look individually as well as collectively – we’ve got so many more levels to get to and the first half was nowhere near good enough in all aspects.

“It’s frustrating because you know how well the team can do if everyone is applying themselves correctly. It felt like we fell short in all areas in the first half.

“We’ve talked a lot about being better from set-pieces. We need to put our bodies on the line, we need to be braver because we have conceded far too many goals from set-pieces this year.

“More teams will look at that as an area of weakness for us. We will probably face it more and more. We need to assess it and see how we can do better.

“But I think ultimate it just comes to putting your body on the line, being brave and doing the ugly side of the game.”

Cherries had the chance to close to one point the gap on the top two on Tuesday – defeat has left them sixth in the table, four points adrift of the automatic promotion spots.

Asked what needed to happen to turn around their poor run of form, Mepham said: “I think first and foremost we need to stick together. If we start falling apart then that’s going to be our season done.

“Knowing how much quality we’ve got in the team – you’ve seen a lot of games this season where we have applied ourselves correctly – we’ve put in a good performance and the result has more often than not been a win.

“But when we are not fully at it, we are not 100 per cent focused you can see like on Tuesday what happened.

“We conceded in the first half and it looked like we deserved to concede – because we were nowhere near the levels we are capable of.

“It’s just important we stick together, make sure we stay focused and make sure everyone raises their game individually because we know we’ve got so much more to give.

“If we look after our own performances, then we will probably get results.

“There’s a lot of games coming up and the league can pass you by if you don’t make the most of it. It’s important we react as quickly as possible.”