SEAN Millwaters is refusing to get too downbeat despite seeing his Supermarine side slip to a first league defeat of the season.

Supermarine had been beaten by Minety in the Dorset & Wilts 1st XV Vase last weekend and followed that up with a 35-10 reverse at home to Combe Down in Dorset & Wilts 1 North.

The defeat sees Millwaters’ men surrender top spot in the table as Melksham have taken over at the summit, although they remain second.

“I’m not overly disappointed. We have gone into this season knowing that teams have got a chance of beating us,” said head coach Millwaters.

“This is a three-year plan, hopefully ending in a challenge for promotion next season.

“We have played one of the better teams in the league and I don’t think they were that much better than us.

“We do want to win the league - every team does - but we know there will be games that we lose this year, so we are not beating ourselves up about it.”

Jamie Barrett and Guy Wilson both dotted down for Millwaters’ side and the head coach said there were still a lot of encouraging things to build on from the contest.

“We took some good positives out of the game. There were seven players under the age of 19 playing and this is all good experience moving forwards,” said Millwaters.

“We had an injury after about 10 minutes and I think that changed the course of the game but I’m not going to make any excuses.

“They were the better team and we made mistakes we shouldn’t have done but this is all part of the learning process.

“Our pack played really well, whereas they had some quick backs and speed is very hard to defend against.”

  • SWINDON also suffered a maiden defeat of the campaign when they went down 35-20 away at Grove.

Sean Lynn’s men had set the pace in South West 1 East but have now been overhauled at the summit by Towcestrians.