ALAN Low insists Royal Wootton Bassett players must start to back themselves if promotion from South West One (East) is to be achieved this season.

Albeit early in the season, Low highlighted perhaps his only area of concern off the back of Bassett’s 43-11 win against Trowbridge at Ballards Ash on Saturday – a win that extended the Wiltshire club’s faultless start to the 2019 season.

With all 35 points secured from the season’s first seven games, Bassett – in company with Old Centralians, Banbury and Oxford Harlequins – have firmly cemented themselves in the minor group of clubs capable of winning promotion to the region’s highest tier this term.

A trip to out-of-form Wimborne this weekend is likely to extend Bassett’s run further.

And Low wants to see his squad build on their levels of self-belief in the run up to Christmas.

He said: “We haven’t talked about promotion or reaching the play-offs, we’ve adopted a week by week approach.

“But what we’ve got to consider are these fluctuations in our performances. I think our players need to start backing themselves a bit more.

“When we’re getting our tempo right and playing the game we want to play, we’ve got some of the best ball carriers in the league. And we’ve got to start backing ourselves and believing in ourselves a bit more.

“There’s more to come from the team. Against Trowbridge, we played the game we wanted to play for 40 minutes or so.

“We’ve played better – our performance against Old Centralians is a good example of a better performance against a better team.

“For us to really kick on from here, we need to look at the performances each week and performing for 80 minutes.

“Players do need to look at confidence levels and self-belief if we are to achieve more too.”

Bassett made a dream start to Saturday’s visit of Trowbridge as Jordan Rye scored from the hosts’ first attack.

Veteran second row Chris Patterson then crossed the line to hand Bassett a 12-0 lead, though determined Trowbridge hit back with a try and two penalties to move within a point.

That was all the joy the visitors had, though.

Teenager Ethan Stock restored parity before Patterson added his second while Sam Davies rounded off the scoring.

Low added: “Our first 10 minutes were brilliant, but we took our foot off the gas a bit to allow Trowbridge to get into the game.

“From there, we improved drastically in the second half.”

Meanwhile, Swindon got the better of Swindon College Old Boys in Southern Counties South.

It’s been a tricky 12 months for Swindon following their relegation from South West One (East) last term, but they do at least hold the town’s bragging rights after winning 33-27.