Jeff Arnette didn’t see a lot in his first game as head coach at South Forsyth, but what he did see left plenty to be desired.

“Well, I saw a lot of mistakes. ... We didn’t play like we’ve been practicing. I think a lot of it was jitters and ... we’ve just got to get our confidence up,” Arnette said after South’s scrimmage with Flowery Branch was called due to lightning in the second quarter with the visiting Falcons up 20-0.

Indeed, miscues cost the War Eagles heavily in the practice game. South fumbled the ball four times, losing three and seeing one go for a touchdown.

In addition, South lost 55 yards on eight penalties in just under a half of play.

“You know, when you’re putting a new offense and a new defense in, the first time you come together and go against somebody, you’re going to see a lot of mistakes, [but] that’s not an excuse,” Arnette said.

“I feel like we’re very capable of playing with that football team, but we just had too many busts and we’ll fix all those things.”

Flowery Branch had two big scoring plays during the game, starting with a 55-yard touchdown strike between quarterback Austin Brown and Logan Conley with 6:31 left in the first quarter.

Conley hauled in the pass about 32 yards from the end zone, and outran defenders the rest of the way. The play ended a 98-yard drive for the Falcons.

Brown (139 passing yards) and Conley (129 receiving yards) also connected on a 74-yard scoring play late in the first half. On that sequence, Brown found Conley on the near sideline just in front of the line of scrimmage. The rest of the yardage came from Conley’s legs, as he made it to the end zone with only one South defender in striking distance.

A missed extra point from Will Monday left things 20-0 with 1:07 left before halftime after that play, and the game was then put under a lightning delay.

The contest was called about 30 minutes later after subsequent strikes caused the 30-minute delay clock to be reset twice.

Between the Brown-to-Conley strikes, the Falcons lucked out on a South fumble at the War Eagle 5. Linebacker Mykah Hester came up with the ball around the 2 and went in for the score with 5:06 left in the second quarter.

South had the ball six times in the half, with the War Eagle drives ending in three punts and three fumbles.

Nick Belyew and Jantzen Jeffrey combined for 94 yards on 4-of-7 passing under center for South.

Sam McKelvey caught a 43-yard pass from Belyew in the first quarter, easily South’s longest gain from scrimmage.

Joe Outlaw had three returns of over 20 yards on special teams for the War Eagles.

Arnette said the team would have plenty to address in the coming week’s practices.

“It’s a scrimmage, but we’re football coaches and players and we want to win at everything we do and we’re not satisfied. If we were satisfied, we’re not going to be very good because we’ve got a ... long, long way to go, but thing about it [is] we’re going to get there,” the coach said.

South will open the regular season against Forsyth Central at the Dawg Pound Friday.