BLUES: Plymouth Albion preview
Bedford Blues make the journey to Plymouth this weekend knowing that they are a scalp the hosts would love to claim.
Mike Rayer's side have made a solid start to the inaugural Championship campaign, continuing where they left off last season, and will visit Brickfields aiming to protect their embryonic 100 per cent record.
Speaking about the clash, Rayer commented: "Plymouth isn't an easy place to go and there is nothing they would like more than to stick one over on us. They will view us a scalp that they want to take.
"It will be extremely competitive, we'll have to play with our heart on our sleeve and we want to play well and win."
Although not at their most fluent, the Blues ousted Coventry 42-6 on their seasonal home bow and will travel as slight favourites to face a Plymouth side that will have an air of the unknown about them.
Rayer continued: "They've brought in a number of new players so we're not entirely sure of what we will face. What we do know is that they will be up for the game and we'll have to battle.
"Our challenge is to keep trying to break defences down and if we want to win we need to be somewhere near our best."
To achieve this, Rayer believes his side need to concentrate on their basics, saying: "Against Coventry we did the hard things well and the easy things not so well.
"At times we were throwing the ball about with abandon, but we got some joy when we stuck to our patterns of play and it will help if we look at our core skills and work to improve those."
Rayer has little in the way of injury worries for the trip to the south west and reckons his biggest headache comes from having to pick the side from the squad he has at his disposal.
He added: "There's good competition for places which is what we want, but that makes my job a bit harder. We've got players who could do with some game time and that may lead to a couple of changes, but overall we're in pretty good shape."
One area that the Blues are looking to strengthen is the front row. A shortage of numbers has left Rayer scouring the market for a short-term signing, a task that he is finding frustrating.
He said: "If you're a prop you could almost name your price. Premiership clubs have to have two front-rowers on the bench and this is limiting the numbers of players who could be available, but we'll just have to keep looking."
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Biggleswade
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 2 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: North west
