A tough start to campaign, but Nelson have regrouped and are ready to challenge Local rugby

SINCE earning promotion to One East in the summer of 2013, Nelson have enjoyed regular top-half finishes – and have even been involved in the race for promotion.

But they looked to have taken a bleak turn at the start of this season with defeats in their opening two games.

The first weekend of the season saw them travel to Brecon, where they lost 25-0, before a 26-3 loss to joint league leaders Penallta.

“We had a really tough start to be honest,” said club secretary Chris Bax.

“The two teams we played are probably going to feature for the league title.

“We were decimated with injuries and lost a few players to Premiership clubs.”

Principality Premiership clubs often look down the leagues to try and find the next diamond in the rough and it seemed Nelson had plenty.

Alex Knott and Huw Rees both left for Pontypridd and the former has been a regular for the Valley Commandos, starting all four games this season while Rees started the first three.

Four other players also joined up with Premiership sides and that left a number of big holes in the squad.

But after their initial struggles, the Unicorns have bounced back with wins over Blaenavon and Caerleon, which has installed much-needed confidence and belief into the players.

“It’s a big loss but we haven’t lost that connection with those players and if they are going to go somewhere else then they’ll come back to us,” reaffirmed Bax.

“So we’ve rallied around and in the last couple of games we’ve had some players back and got back on track basically.

“[We did] a bit of soul searching within to be honest.

“We knew we weren’t far away. We changed the game plan slightly and it’s worked for us so far.

“A couple of players who have featured for our second team have had to step up and they’ve been rewarded with first-team spots and they’ve done well and kept those jerseys.”

Bax insists the squad is just taking things one game at a time with this weekend’s WRU National Plate first round tie at Caerphilly up next.

Caerphilly were beaten finalists in the WRU National Bowl two years ago and will provide Nelson with a stern test, despite being from the league below.

“We’re still targeting top half of the league at least and we want to have a good run in the cup,” he said.

“We’ve got Caerphilly away in the first round. We are confident but we are not going to take Caerphilly lightly by any stretch of the imagination. They are a quality side.

“We’ve set ourselves short-term goals and at the moment the goals were to win the last two league games and win the cup game so hopefully we’ll do that and then we’ll look at the goals for the next month.

“It’s an old cliché but it’s one game at a time, one month at a time.”