ROYAL Wootton Bassett head coach Alan Low is has his fingers crossed that his players will be ready to pull up their socks and haul themselves back to winning ways at Wimborne this weekend.

Bassett crashed out of the Dorset & Wilts 1st XV Cup at the first time of asking last Saturday as they were battered 67-10 at county rivals Devizes.

That sobering afternoon left Low’s young charges with plenty of soul-searching to do and the Bassett chief is hoping that his players aren’t still feeling sorry for themselves when they make the trip to Dorset to take on a team that have suffered three straight defeats in a row.

But Low does have a handful of selection headaches, proving that it’s not just professional rugby clubs at the top of the game that are currently being affected by the Rugby World Cup.

“We had a number of guys missing last weekend that had gone up to watch matches at the World Cup and it looks like we’re going to have another three away on Saturday too,” said Low.

“There’s not much that we can do about that because it’s great to go and watch those games but it means that we’re missing a few from our side.

“But I can’t really moan about numbers because we’ve got a lot of players that are available to me – there are great numbers in the second team and even more in the third team at the moment.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how we react at Wimborne.

“The game at Devizes was a really bad day at the office for us. We were really poor and we’ve tried to just draw a line under it.

“But it’s up to us to try and make up for that and bounce back with a good result.”

BASSETT'S Colts A recorded their third win of the season with a 31-5 victory at North Dorset.

Josh Mcafferty opened the scoring after 10 minutes with a converted try but a minute later North Dorset hit back with a try of their own.

Matt Hayes extended Bassett’s lead with a converted try after after some good work from Elye Darragh before Dan Thompson was to add a third try on 50 minutes.

Jake O’Neill bagged try number four after 62 minutes and then winger Sean Norris finished the scoring.