By Paul Smith 
Coventry Rugby head coach Alex Rae is backing the Butts Park Arena crowd to create an outstanding atmosphere for his team’s final home league game of the season on Friday evening (8pm kick off).
“Our support has been fantastic this season and another big crowd under the lights should be really special,” he said.
“Even at 12-all against Bedford when we weren’t especially fluent in the first half the crowd were brilliant and it was great to get them on their feet with some tries after we addressed a few things at half-time.
“We have played some good stuff recently and the boys are hoping to give them something really special on Friday night.”
Cov go into the match on the back of a seven-game unbeaten run, but Rae remembers clearly just how close the Exiles came to lowering Cov’s colours at the Richmond Athletic Ground in January.
“We very nearly came unstuck when we played down there and were only a kick away from losing,” he said.
“Scottish have a good relationship with Harlequins so you never quite know who will be playing.
“They play a nice attacking brand of rugby and seem to have developed the knack of sticking in games. With a bit of luck they could be a lot higher up the table as they’ve lost six or seven times by one score or less.
“It’s important that we focus on putting in a really good display on Friday and only think about the Pirates game and how Ealing are doing afterwards.”
Cov have claimed bonus points in all seven of their most recent wins with the last four games seeing 33 tries and 217 points added to their tally.
And according to their head coach this brilliant spell of form has its foundations in many hours spent on the training ground since last June.
“We’ve scored a lot of points in the last four weeks but that’s not an accident or a surprise,” he said.
“We’ve put in loads of work to get to this point and our attacking game has been brilliant recently. It started in pre-season with the coaches and the players working together, establishing how we want to play the game and building that belief in what we are trying to do.
“There have been times when it hasn’t worked as well as we would like and that’s when you have to stick to what you have worked on.
“The pace we train with and play at has served us really well but we are also aware that teams come to the BPA and try to break the game up and slow us down and we have to adapt to that.”
Buy tickets to Coventry Rugby’s home game against London Scottish on Friday May 3rd here: https://www.coventryrugby.co.uk/tickets/matchday-tickets/
