CHARLIE Palmer bagged an impressive hat-trick as Chippenham comfortably defeated Windsor 41-24 in their latest South West One (East) tie at the weekend.

Following a one-point loss to Beaconsfield a week earlier, Chippenham re-grouped and welcomed the returning Matt Dickens, Joe Thomas and Palmer back in perfect style by bagging their fourth win of the season to lift them to sixth in the table – 13 points shy of table topping Royal Wootton Bassett.

Despite the impressive result, Chippenham had to dig for their points – particularly after Windsor scored an early converted try to lead 0-7.

Chippenham registered 22 points before Windsor next troubled the scorers – Douglas kicked a penalty while Palmer, Taff Hussain and James Cook crossed the whitewash to score three tries, two were converted.

An offside penalty pegged the hosts’ lead back to 12 points by half-time.

The lead was reduced further at the start of the second. Direct running from Windsor’s centres earned them a second try, which was converted.

But that proved to be the visitors’ final challenge as Palmer notched his hat-trick before Jack Smith added the final points.

In other results, Marlborough registered their second win on the spin when downing Beaconsfield 29-22.

Marlborough made a flying start and were quickly 17-0 up thanks to Jimmy Adams’ pair of tries and Callum Hunt’s converted marker.

The hosts’ complete period of domination ended there, though. Beaconsfield reduced their deficit to two points by half time.

Jimmy Adams completed his hat-trick after Nado Cakau also crossed the whitewash, earning Marlborough a 29-15 lead.

Try as they might, Beaconsfield’s late efforts went without reward.

Marlborough face Chippenham away from home this weekend.

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.”