Nicky Hunt felt he and his Leyton Orient team-mates showed their spirit as they battled adversity in Tuesday night's 2-0 defeat by Plymouth.

Up against it as little as 36 seconds in, when Robbie Weir was dismissed for a foul on Ben Purrington, they found themselves two men down within a quarter of an hour when Jens Janse was sent off on his debut to cap a nightmare start.

Orient have been rightly criticsed in recent weeks for their below-par performances and did not seem fully committed in Saturday’s defeat at Notts County, but the performance at the Matchroom Stadium in midweek could not have been more constrasting.

Hunt played most of the game in a makeshift back three after the two dismissals, and felt he and his teammates had showcased their spirit to a recipient crowd as they refused to roll over, and still looked dangerous on the break.

He said: “We showed everyone who was here, everyone who watched the game that we are together and we are a million per cent behind this football club and want the best for it.

“You can’t let the spirit drop in training and in the dressing room. We spend 80 per cent of our lives together for ten months of the year, and if you’re not together in there it shows out here.”

Few Orient games – if any – can have begun in such bizarre fashion in the club’s 135-year history, and Hunt admitted he feared the worst when Jens Janse became the second man to see red with less than a quarter of an hour on the clock.

He said: “You’re a human being, you can only think ‘it’s happening again’. We just had to focus and change positions and adjust to the situation.

“In any job you are going to be handed situations that you need to rectify, sort your work colleagues out, and that’s what we did tonight. I’m proud as punch of the players who were out there tonight.

“From start to finish the officials were borderline atrocious. You’re fighting a losing battle from the first moment.

“We put the game from Saturday behind us and as players you’ve got to put on a performance.

“We put in the heart part and the work-rate part, but we didn’t get the result and that needs to start coming soon.”