SWINDON have yet to concede a point in 2011.

Fair enough, that statistic only constitutes one game - but the Greenbridge Road side’s comfortable 26-0 defeat of Newbury Stags in Southern Counties North on Saturday presented an emphatic message to the rest of the division at the start of a new year.

They might not want to say it out loud, but Neil Loader’s men are chasing promotion and another impressive win will only restart the momentum which was somewhat halted by six weeks without competition.

Loader still shies away from talk about moving up a level come April, and once again the former Rugby Parma boss preferred to focus on the positive individual aspects of a thorough and clinical defensive display.

“We were comfortable, we never looked like we were going to concede,” he said.

“Overall it was a comfortable day at the office, that came from both how we defended and how they attacked, but Newbury have had some good results this season so we were happy.

“We haven’t had the pressure cooker of a game for six weeks and it was really pleasing to see the boys respond in the way they did on the pitch.

“We played some good rugby at times and we concentrated on what we wanted to get right.”

Neil Maycock and Ash Brown shared the four Swindon tries as Loader’s side retained top spot in a hotly contested division.

And whilst the coach rued a handful of missed chances, as well as two apparently disallowed scores, he could not have asked for much more out of his team’s first outing since November.

“There were two incidents which looked like tries which were disallowed, although I was quite a long way from the action,” he said.

“Then there were four other occasions where we could, and maybe should have scored.

“But we played well and I was very pleased at the end of the game.”

The tryscoring exploits of utility forward Brown have not gone unnoticed by Loader over the course of the first half of the campaign.

Recruited from local rivals Swindon College Old Boys during the off-season, Brown has been a revelation at Greenbridge Road in his relatively short time at the club.

And Loader believes his arrival, and continued form, has provided Swindon with the perfect balance in attacking options.

“We do have a really nice mix of players going forwards,” he said.

“Ash has come in and done very well. For his try at the weekend he didn’t stop running and kept pumping his legs when he had no right to score.

“He is not the big power runner like Tom Mannion but he gives us something else which gives us a great mix.”

In the Berks/Bucks & Oxon Premier, Swindon College Old Boys stopped a worrying slide in form with a narrow 12-3 win at Phoenix to consolidate fifth place.