Swindon Rugby’s run of tough results continued as they went down on their travels at second-placed Towcestrians on Saturday.

The Greenbridge Road side lost 43-17 to the Northants side leaving them ninth in the table with seven games remaining.

The Towcestrians fixture represented the second leg in a run where they play the league’s top three sides back-to-back and it proved to be as tough a test on the field as it did on paper.

Towcestrians racked-up six tries and as Swindon could only manage two in reply.

Swindon centre Cameron Brown struggled to find the positives in defeat but did say the one-sided scoreline was not a fair representation on the game as a whole.

“It wasn’t a great performance all round. We did some good things in attack. They maybe played the conditions better than us, there’s a big slope there that they had in the first half. But our one-on-one tackling wasn’t good enough,” said Brown.

“They were more clinical than us and capitalised on our mistakes.

“We let a few sloppy tries in towards the end of the game which but a sheen on the score for them.”

Brown did think a comeback was on at half-time with the scores at 21-10.

“The scoreline wasn’t a true reflection of the game, we were still in at the half.

“We thought we could use the conditions in the second half, get our kick chase going but that’s been poor all season and didn’t come off.”

Swindon’s game with Oxford Harlequins last week was ended early after lock Dave Cox had to be taken to hospital. Though Brown said the experience hadn’t affected Swindon’s performance.

“Dave Cox was back starting which was good. We knew they are second for a reason but we were plenty capable of beating them if we were a 100% but we didn’t play at our best.”