SWINDON continued their miserable season in South West One East with a 50-12 hammering away at Beaconsfield on Saturday.

Drafting in several second and even third-team players to help form a full team, Swindon put up some sort of fight in the opening 40 minutes before being blown away after the break as inexperience and fatigue played a part.

The result leaves Mike Thompson’s men second from bottom of the table on 22 points from 24 games, with their relegation having been confirmed last month.

Swindon player-coach Adam Westall thanked those men who played a part in the fixture for testing themselves at a higher level, but once again was forced to criticise the absentees that made pulling in inexperienced players necessary.

He said: “We’re at the tail-end of a long season, but again, availability was pretty poor from what I’d say is our core first team.

“We had some good guys step up from the seconds and thirds to help us fulfil the fixture.

“The guys that came in stepped up really well. Our second team standard is some way below where our first team is. I think they’re Step Nine and our first team is Step Six, so it’s a massive jump in standard, but they did themselves proud.

“We’re never going to judge them in any other way than by their attitude and application because without those guys, we wouldn’t have been able to fulfil that fixture.

“We were very competitive in the first half, but we just ran out of gas in the second.”

A lack of availability has caused Westall and the rest of the coaching staff at Swindon a headache for the latter part of the season, but he insists fault does not solely lie with the players and criticism must be shared throughout the set-up.

Westall said: “They say attitude is reflected by leadership, so we’ll definitely look in-house first to see what we’ve done this season as a collective coaching group.

“We probably haven’t got it right, so we’ll have to go back to the drawing board there.

“A lot of performances on a Saturday will come down to individual’s availability, recruitment and all that stuff, so I’d say it is a collective effort.

“Across the board, we probably haven’t got it right and we need to try and put that right in the summer ahead of next season.”

Elsewhere, Royal Wootton Bassett were narrowly beaten 25-17 by runaway champions Newbury Blues.

The result, combined with Marlborough’s win over Salisbury, means Alan Low’s side cannot finish any higher than fifth in the table due to Marlborough moving 14 points clear with only 10 points left to play for over the final two rounds.

Both Swindon College Old Boys and Supermarine had fixtureless weekends in Southern Counties South and Dorset & Wilts One North respectively, with their programmes resuming this Saturday.