SWINDON’S Jon Sore is pleased to see his side finally throwing off the shackles after admitting that they were burdened by the weight of expectation earlier this season.

Last summer, the County Ground side finished third-from-bottom in the Glos/Wilts Division and were demoted as part of the West of England Premier League revamped its structure.

Finding themselves playing in the WEPL Wiltshire – the WEPL’s bottom tier – this term, Swindon currently find themselves sixth in the table, 40 points adrift of table-toppers Marshfield.

Batsman Sore says that his team put too much pressure on themselves to succeed earlier in the season but believes that Andy Staff’s side are now savouring their cricket, evidenced by last weekend’s nine-wicket shellacking of Trowbridge.

“We’re on a little bit of a roll at the moment. We’re playing with freedom and sometimes, that’s exactly what you need,” said Sore, whose team have won three matches on the trot.

“I think that we were putting a bit too much pressure on ourselves at the start of the season but now we’re enjoying things and that’s why our performances have been a lot better.

“It’s hard to say why we played with that pressure. The restructuring didn’t help us and I think we suffered a little because of that.

“We’ve got five games to go and the plan is carry on playing with freedom and we’ll see where it takes us.

“We might not finish at the top of the table but if somebody’s going to finish there, we can make sure that we make it hard for them, because we’ve still got to play a lot of the teams that are above us.”

Tomorrow, Staff’s men travel to take on Westbury, who are currently third in the table and chasing the title.

In June, the two teams played out an unlikely tie at the County Ground – Swindon required just three runs to win with two overs of their innings remaining, and with four wickets in hand, but Westbury managed to bowl the hosts out with two balls to spare.

Sore added: “You can always look back at certain games and think that they’re ones you should have won, and that tie was one of them.

“Because of that game, we know all about Westbury’s qualities, but we’re just going to go there and try and play our brand of cricket.

“We also want to go there and enjoy ourselves, and maybe we’ll be able to play as well as we have been doing recently.”