Mark Robinson believes Sussex have the characters needed to turn their 50-overs campaign around.

But he admits they were walking an emotional tight rope after their second successive defeat.

Sussex talked things over for at least 20 minutes in the changing room after going down to Nottinghamshire at Hove in the Royal London One-Day Cup on Thursday.

The setback leaves precious little room for error in their five remaining Group B games, starting at Kent tomorrow.

Robinson gave senior players the chance to have their say in the immediate aftermath of a pretty tame defeat.

And he will be intrigued to see the response.

He said: “When you come off the pitch you are emotional.

“Emotion is sometimes good because it gets some home truths said but equally you have got make sure it’s not going to harm somebody’s confidence going forward, especially if they haven’t got quite the resilience or the skill level or the experience to be able to cope.

“It’s a balancing act but we have got some fine people in there who will continue to make a difference for this club.”

Sussex now need to go on the sort of run which powered them into the last eight of the NatWest T20 Blast after an indifferent start to their group fixtures.

Robinson believes they can do it.

He said: “One-day cricket is about momentum. Notts have taken a bit of momentum into this competition.

“We lost the game at Horsham to rain and we lost at Hampshire.

“That’s sport and it is up to us and the characters in the dressing room to change that around.

“One thing about one-day cricket is there is no draw - unless it rains!

“You are heroes or you are villains.

“You are having 20-minute debriefs or you are having five-minute celebrations.

“We are emotional after a defeat but we have to make sure the people in the club aren’t emotional and are dealing with facts.”

Robinson believes Sussex made the sensible decision to leave out Ollie Robinson against Notts, even though they were short of seam bowling options and had used them all up before the end of the contest.

He is likely to return at Kent along with Luke Wells also back in contention.

Coach Robinson said: “Ollie could have played and wanted to play and was cheesed off he wasn’t playing.

“But, with a niggling hamstring, firstly we don’t want to drag it from game to game because it definitely affected his performance in the Hampshire match.

“And, secondly, we didn’t want it to extend to something else.

“It was the same with Luke Wells, who has got a niggle in his side.

“You don’t want that to go into a full blown side injury.

“I would imagine both would be available for selection.”

Alfonso Thomas took a wicket with his first ball against Notts and Robinson is largely pleased with how his loan signing has done.

He said: “He’s a competitor and a warrior and he has got loads of experience.

“He has been fantastic around the place and he has settled in really well.

“He probably went over-length going up the hill a tad more than he would want.

“But he is very honest, he has played the game and he knows what areas he could maybe do a little better in and what his strengths are.

“He came back strong and ran in hard at the death.

“We bowled a lot in the last ten or 15 overs with more men in the ring than you would normally have.

“That meant more dot balls but also more chance of the occasional ball going to the boundary.”