LYDNEY team manager Dave Emery is looking forward to his side’s first home game of the season after two away defeats.

Emery says the scorelines in the 39-5 loss at Exmouth to open the season and Saturday’s 23-7 defeat at Newbury Blues weren’t true reflections of the two games and hopes the home comforts of Regentsholme will provide better luck against Ivybridge this weekend.

“Obviously we knew it was going to be a tough start to the season,” he said.

“Exmouth have just come down and will probably be gunning for promotion but they scored three tries in the last 10 minutes and I think that flattered them a little.

“We started that game very well and had all the ball for the first 20-25 minutes.

“But they took chances that we didn’t.

“Then on Saturday at Newbury we put in a heroic defensive effort as we couldn’t get the ball and they battered our line.

“But we had a yellow card in our back row and that meant we were a little disorganised at the line-out and they’ve scored through their scrum-half sneaking down the blind side.

“After that we got into the game a bit more. Reuben Haile scored a great individual try and Ollie Locke converted it and I think Newbury would have been relieved to hear the half-time whistle with the score at 8-7.

“We spoke at half-time about how we could probably win the game if we got the ball but we made too many individual errors,

“We weren’t finishing things off and the 23-7 didn’t reflect the game at all.

“It’s a hard one to take watching on the sideline.”