SWINDON skipper Mike Thompson hopes a draw against Stratford-upon-Avon at the weekend can inspire his men to ignite a change in the club’s South West One East campaign fortunes.

Thompson’s troops came from 10 points down to record a 20-20 tie against their West Midlands rivals on Saturday afternoon, a result which earned Swindon their first league points of the season at the seventh attempt.

The performance pleased Thompson, who admits Stratford were fortunate to land a pair of early blows at Greenbridge Road after two attempted clearance kicks were successfully charged down and converted into tries.

“It was good to get a result,” said Thompson.

“Our target was obviously a win, but I think the result was a fair reflection of what happened in the game.

“To come away with two points is good, we needed something. Now we can look at next weekend and target another result to start building points.

“Both of their tries came from charged down kicks.

“We’ve had a few faces return to the team in recent weeks, so really we’re quite a new group of people. They scored from a couple of minor mistakes, and we couldn’t really stop that.

“When you look at it, they didn’t score any tries by working their own set piece – it was just mistakes from us and they capitalised on that.”

Saturday’s game proved a stop-start affair as play had to be paused while the club waited for an ambulance to arrive after a player was suffering from pain after landing awkwardly.

The spill prompted a 20-minute delay in the tie, before the concluding 15 minutes – at which point Swindon were 10 points down – was completed on the second team pitch.

Thompson said: “It was an odd game, we had to stop the game and wait for an ambulance with 15 minutes left to play.

“There was a 20-minute period where we weren’t playing, we had to wait for the second team to finish and then move over to the other pitch.

“We were 10 points down at the time of the stoppage. We re-started with a penalty kick on the other pitch and had 15 minutes to get back into the game.

“The break wasn’t ideal, we did start to stiffen up.”

Elsewhere in South West One East, Royal Wootton Bassett climbed the league table after winning 35-22 at Wimborne.

In Southern Counties South, Swindon College Old Boys suffered a 32-24 home defeat by Sherborne – dropping the club to seventh in the division after Walcot beat Grove.

Meanwhile, Supermarine’s poor start to the season in Dorset & Wilts One North continued as they suffered their fifth straight loss – 47-8 at home to Royal Wootton Bassett II.