Brown: Our promotion bid is over
EK Rugby Club coach Craig Brown admits their promotion hopes have gone up in smoke and he will start looking to how his young side can improve for a West Region One tilt next term.
The Torrance House side lost to Lenzie a fortnight ago in a result that left them seventh in the division and it means they now have little but pride to play for in the remainder of the campaign.
EK now host bottom side Annan on Saturday looking to return to winning ways.
Brown said:“Promotion is not there for us now.
“I have to start thinking about next season now and the reasons why we didn’t progress as far as we wanted to this season.
“If we had some old heads in the team, I’d be really concerned by the mistakes we’ve been making, but the fact we have so many young guys gives me hope for the future because they will learn from this.
“Over the next few weeks, we need to really focus on our structure and get a really solid understanding of why we play rugby the way we do and that there won’t be a space on the team for anyone who can’t stick to the plan.
“It is really affecting the rest of the team and inconsistency has killed us this season.”
Reflecting on the 12-38 defeat to Lenzie on February 17, he said:“I would rather be beaten than lose and I really feel like we lost the game.
“Players were trying to take the game on themselves, rather than bring other players into the game and made it tricky for us to build the kind of pressure we wanted.
“We mentioned all week that we had to be clever with our penalty count and we couldn’t afford to give Lenzie an easy out. They are second top of the league for a reason, but we lost far too many penalties and our passing accuracy wasn’t great either.
“We know we have to be better.” Kick-off on Saturday is 3pm.