SWINDON St George head coach Geoff Norris was full of pride for his players, despite watching them go down 46-10 to the Coventry Bears in their first ever game.

Playing at Supermarine in front of a large crowd eager to see their first taste of rugby league in Wiltshire for 10 years, St George put in a creditable performance and went into half-time well in control of their opponents.

But experience and fitness told after the break and Coventry ran out convincing winners.

Despite the result, Norris was delighted with his squad, especially those who have only been learning the sport for a couple of months.

"Overall I'm pleased with the performance," he admitted.

"Obviously the scoreline is quite big against us, but the first half performance was creditable and the defensive effort from the lads was excellent.

"Anyone who was watching could have seen that we just ran out of steam towards the end of the second half, and that's when they put the points on.

"Everything we could take out of the game was positive.

"We had some exceptional performances out there - our hooker was playing his first ever game of rugby league but looked like he'd been playing it all his life."

Coventry dominated the early exchanges and opened the scoring inside the first couple of minutes when they broke through for an unconverted try.

The visitors thought they had a second just minutes later, but the referee ruled it out for not being grounded properly, however they finally doubled their advantage on the 20-minute mark.

A quick break down the left saw them work the overlap, and a simple offload just before the line allowed them to touch down under the posts.

With 26 minutes gone it was 16-0 as Coventry drove hard towards the line and powered over, despite the best efforts of three Swindon players.

It looked as though the Bears would run away with it, but Swindon had other ideas and Neil Greenwood, pictured left, broke through a couple of tackles to cross over and score the first try of the newly-formed Saints' existence.

Then, minutes later, the hosts had pulled another one back, with Darren Johnston crashing over from a well-worked penalty which was converted by Greenwood, and Swindon were well on top.

Going in 16-10 down at the break, St George looked to be ready to make a real fight of it, but Coventry's greater fitness told in the second half as they scored five unanswered tries to put the result out of sight.

Norris said: "They (Coventry) are a well organised, well drilled side who have been in the league for many, many years.

"So to hold them like we did in the first half was credit to our players and bodes well for the future.

"We need to work on fitness levels - some of the players have come across from rugby union and it's a completely different game because it's non-stop and a very high tempo game.

"Near the end you could tell that our big boys were tiring in the middle and Coventry, to their credit, took advantage of it.

"But we've got a good nucleus here and that's vital if we're going to succeed.

"There's some good players already signed on and, if today is anything to go by, I can see things just getting better and better."

11:16am Tuesday 13th May 2008

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