SWINDON College Old Boys director of rugby Martin Lloyd still has hopes of survival after his club saw their deficit at the bottom of the Southern Counties North table reduced to four points without taking to the field.

Drifters have been deducted five points after giving up their game with Reading Abbey last weekend, giving College hope as they prepare to travel to Stow-on-the-Wold this weekend.

Mark Lea’s side have five games remaining in the season, with the next two coming against teams in the bottom four, and Lloyd knows their fate could be decided in the coming fixtures.

“That now puts us more on level pegging and with a couple of good results for ourselves, we could quite easily find ourselves going up a couple of places,” he said.

“We’ve got Stow this weekend, which we would hope to do well in, and Thatcham coming up.

“If you pick up a couple of those victories and some bonus points elsewhere, then there is no reason to give up the ghost.

“We are still in the fight, which is really refreshing for the guys.

“We are desperate to stay up and we have fought all the way through the season, and now there is some light at the end of the tunnel.”

Despite the weekend off, College’s injury problems that have plagued their entire campaign have not eased as they will be without Matt Allen (ankle) and Tucker Blinkhorn (unavailable) to name but a few.

However, Lloyd will be boosted by the return of Michael Calvert at nine and Gareth Davis is back from a back strain.

“We’ve got so many unavailabities through people being injured and people being away,” he added, as they look to respond to a 33-5 defeat to Stow back in November.

“Once again, we are very strong in the pack, so we are looking forward to the forward confrontation.

“We played Stow at our place and they were very strong and gave us a good run, but some of their results have been really patchy.”