DEVIZES ended a tough season on a high as they beat second-placed Towcestrians 41-17 on Saturday.

The London Road side though are still unclear of their fate next season after finishing third from bottom in the South West One East division in their first season back.

Captain Julian Taylor has said that the side are preparing themselves for the worst, with the rules stating that they should be relegated, but until it is known which teams will be coming up it is still unclear what division they will be plying their trade in next season.

“It has been a hard season,” he said after Saturday’s impressive win.

“We have been a little bit unlucky with injuries and obviously the pitch being out of action without a shadow of a doubt cost us.

“Playing on that other pitch, I know we are still playing at Devizes, but you didn’t have the traditional great support that we are used to having from people.

“It was quiet and it didn’t feel like home at times and I think that had a mental impact on the players.

“When you get yourself into a rut and you are losing and you can’t get out of it, it just becomes harder and harder to get a result anywhere.

“We won our last four home games so we finished reasonably well, when you think that between November and February we couldn’t get a win for love nor money.

“By the letter of the law we go down, so that is the basis we have got to work on “It could be in June they say it is only going to be two that go down and you are safe.

“Until we are told otherwise we have got to act as if we are going down.

“Wherever we are we are either going to come straight back up or set a standard for ourselves and perform much better in the league than this year.”

Towcestrians showed their intent early on, with a try which completely opened up the Devizes defence after just a few moments, showing their physicality and pace early on with Alex Chalcraft going in on the right wing. Falvey missed the conversion.

Devizes immediately responded as some good line speed in defence forced a Tows knock on which was picked up by Tom Collins.

Collins played in prop Toby Randall who then offloaded neatly to James Gaiger, playing his final match in a Devizes shirt before retirement, and with it galloped over the line to level the scores. Thompson converted to nudge Devizes in front.

The scrums saw the Saddlebacks pushing the visitors back on almost every put in and with the momentum they managed to score a neat try out in the backs, with Orwin making a searing break and playing in full back Luke Rapson. Rory Brown kicked the conversion to bring it to 14-5.

The visitors weren’t done there however, as they pinned back Devizes into their twenty two and assembled a destructive maul which saw Sam Sturley score. Falvey missed the conversion but only four points were in it at the break.

The second half couldn’t have gotten off to a better start as Taylor picked off a Tows pass on the intercept and the Devizes captain sprinted under the posts, with only seconds gone into the second period. With this try also being converted, Devizes continued, boosted by a further three pointer by Andy Thompson after a Tows offence, which made it 24-10.

A searing break from Lewis Paget, returning to the field from the sin-bin, gave Devizes momentum and again Jones was played in to score out wide.

Tows did hit back with a really well worked try with hooker Fen Gallacher getting in on the end of the some neat offloading, however Devizes left the best to last as off lineout a training ground move saw Rapson bag his brace with a jinking run after coming into the line.