ROYAL Wootton Bassett head coach Alan Low is hoping a kinder outlook on the fixtures front will help see his side return to winning ways.

Having played three of the current top five in South West One East in their last three outings, Bassett now have the easier task of travelling to 12th-placed Oxford Harlequins on Saturday.

However, Low knows the performance of his side must be at the same standard as that of the last few weeks if they are to stand a chance of ending their six-game losing streak.

“This is the tester now,” said Low.

“We’re getting the performances right against the better sides in the league and we need to maintain those performances when we are playing the sides lower down the table.

“That’s the mental side we’ve got to take into games and it is possibly a maturity thing for our squad, with it being such a young squad and they have not been at this level before.

“Oxford’s results at home have been really good, their away form is not quite as good.

“We’re expecting a tough day at the office on Saturday.

“If we get the performance somewhere near what we produced last weekend, it will be good.”

Bassett will be without Kyle Lovell, Chris Patterson and Josh McCafferty from the forward pack tomorrow, two through injury and the other through work commitments, which, given their already long injury list, will be a blow for Low.

However, this dip in form, having started life after promotion with just one defeat in their opening seven games, has not affected the mood in the camp and the Ballards Ash side are keen to turn their fortunes around.

“Morale is one of those things,” added Low.

“We set out our stall with what we wanted to do this year and we are still on target to meet that.

“I think the realisation in the squad is, we know we could, and probably should, be doing a bit better than this recent run of form shows.

“That was the last of the difficult January period games and we have got to keep the bar at the level we have played at since Christmas.

“As usual, we have got a few unavailabilities that we have got to try to account for.

“That’s going to be hard to manage, especially with the rest of the injuries we have got at the moment.”