Stourbridge Saxons look to end well

Stourbridge Saxons welcome their West Midlands rivals Coventry to Stourton Park on Saturday with director of rugby Neil Mitchell looking to end the year on a high.

Despite losing out 22-19 at Macclesfield last weekend, Mitchell left Cheshire with enough positives to go into this clash with a club that he knows well.

The Saxons chief played a handful of games for Coventry back in 2002 and knows that back-to-back defeats will not have been taken lightly.

He said: "If we can beat Coventry it will be a great way to go into the second-half of the season and we have more winnable matches coming up.

"Coventry have had a couple of dodgy games and the crowd down there are not the most patient so they might get on their backs."

The narrow defeat at Macclesfield followed back-to-back wins for the Saxons but Mitchell remains confident.

He said: "I'm not as disappointed as you might think. The performance was very good, in the first-half it was very good indeed.

"The defence performed well, they scored one very good try and one we should have stopped.

"The communication was better – you could hear the voices from the bench. It's disappointing that we lost but if we look at the performance we can go forward.

"We had parity in the scrum and if we can get that then we can build on it. We have got very good attacking backs and sometimes we have been guilty of just shuffling the ball down the line."

Prop Marshall Gadd made his first appearance on loan from Moseley and there was also a debut for new signing Joe Reid, who came off the bench to replace injured prop Mike Hill.

Hill should recover for the Coventry match, but centre Ben Barkley faces a fitness test after taking a knock on the knee.