ROYAL Wootton Bassett head coach Alan Low described his side’s 33-22 loss to High Wycombe as a “bitter pill to swallow”.

Bassett were without five of their first choice players, including their whole front row and had to play the latter portion of the game with 14 men due to a series of injuries.

Trailing by four points as the game ticked into 80 minutes and looking for the try that would win them the game Bassett coughed up the ball in the opposition half and allowed High Wycombe to run it in under the posts.

Low said the late score and defeat put him in a dark place at the end of the game but thought the performance showed the progress his team had made.

“It was a bitter pill to swallow, it shows how far we’ve come and the guys showed an awful lot of character,” said Low.

“The energy the boys showed and their work rate in the second half was massive, for me the first half performance cost us.”

Gavin Ougan, Matt Hutchins and Carl Brant all had to go off injured and Low thinks that with a full compliment of players the result would have been different.

“We played 20-25 with 14 men, in that respect the lads showed a real bit of determination. I have no doubt that we would have won that game. On the day we struggled a bit up front, which I was expecting through the players we were missing. To lose Gavin Ougan and Matt Hutchins was a nightmare really.

“When we played with the ball, we made huge inroads, we had the best backs on show, we just failed to get them enough the ball.

“I was gutted for the boys, I sort of felt we could have reversed the result from the first away game of the season.”