SWINDON finished the season in a winning fashion by edging to a hard-fought 19-17 success away at Grove.

The result means Sean Lynn’s side have finished fourth in the South West One East table, holding off Witney by a single point.

That is chiefly down to a strong end to the campaign, in which they won five of the final six fixtures, with the only defeat being away at champions Chippenham.

Josh James, Ollie Wilson and Tom Mannion all touched down for Swindon against Grove as the visitors got the better of an error-strewn contest in Oxfordshire.

Swindon skipper Adam Westall said: “It was a close game. We played OK but it was a typical end-of-season game.

“Both sides made lots of mistakes but I think we deserved to win.

“We scored a few tries and showed glimpses of what we can do, especially in the backs.

“It’s tough when you travel anywhere in this league but our away form this year has been the best it’s been for a little while.

“We’ve been to places like Devizes and Towcestrians, where we have struggled in the past, and got results.

“That’s encouraging going forward but we know that if we want to be up there challenging, we probably need to be winning about 80 per cent of our away games.”

Swindon had high hopes for the season but a run of four defeats on the spin early in the new year severely hampered Lynn’s men.

Westall reckons there are still plenty of good things to work on and added that the Greenbridge Road side will not be slowing down over the summer.

“We had a bit of a bad patch after Christmas where we lost a few games in a row and that blew our chances of finishing in the top three,” said Westall.

“We’ve finished 10 points behind Windsor in third and we know that we’ve left a few points out there over the course of the season, so that’s certainly something we can look to build on.

“A lot of the boys in are in the Sevens side so there’ll still be busy over the summer.”