By John Wilkinson 
DIRECTOR of rugby Rowland Winter offered no excuses after Coventry’s 34-14 defeat at Esher while stressing that finding consistency will be key to the side’s progress.
The kick-off was put back 30 minutes after Cov were delayed on the way down, but Winter refused to link that to another overall disappointing performance after they had taken an early eight-point lead.
“The late arrival of the bus and the lack of time in the warm-up is not something we can offer as an excuse, and we can’t use the fact that we are a new group starting with new players,” he said.
“That doesn’t work – we’ve come to Esher, and we’ve been outplayed and outperformed. We’ve provided opportunities on a plate to them, they’ve taken them, and when we’ve gone down their end and created space and opportunities ourselves, we simply haven’t taken the chances.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’ve got to step up now; but how we performed today simply wasn’t good enough and we’ll be looking for a positive reaction at home to Fylde next weekend.
“We have a strong and talented group of players, they work hard during the week and are focused on performing well. They have demonstrated that they can play well, but have not demonstrated consistency.
“We will work together on that this week, with a focus on returning to the basics of our game.”
“We’ve put in strong performances at home and at Moseley, we’ve shown what we can do, but it’s about bringing that out week after week and getting consistency into our performance.
“We’ve shown a strong scrum and line-out at times and our back play has looked good at times, but we’ve got to stick it all together week after week and create a united performance – that is key, and at the moment it is just not happening.
“The players will take it on the chin, they’re an honest group and they’ll understand that they haven’t performed today. It will hurt them, and we’ve got to use that as a weapon next week.
“After a poor performance we’ve responded well back at home, and we’ll be looking for another strong reaction next Saturday against Fylde. There’s a lot of hard work to do this week.”
