Archer ready for season opener with Blues

Newbury travel to Stratford upon Avon as their league campaign begins this weekend

NEWBURY Blues head coach Paul Archer is ready to unleash the attack as his side prepares for their opening South West 1 East fixture at Stratford upon Avon on Saturday.

Blues ended their pre-season preparation with a 27-24 defeat against Havant at Monks Lane last Thursday and now Archer is eager to get their campaign under way.

He said: “I’m relatively confident. We don’t know an awful lot about Stratford, but we know they’ll be trying to focus on us and our game.

“We need to make sure that our defence is strong – I think there needs to be a few tweaks made,” he admitted.

Blues were relegated from South West Premier last season, despite winning 13 of their 26 league games.

And Archer said: “It’s just a case of going back to what we know and how we have played in the past few seasons.”

Newbury created a number of brilliant attacking phases in the defeat against Havant and Archer wants to show the division how impressive his forwards are.

“We need to make sure that we unleash the attack, which is absolutely electric when we get it right, and it’s about taking care of the ball when we win it.

“When we attacked, we looked good,” Archer said. “We had four or five chances to score and we did that.”

After the trip to Stratford, Blues welcome Swindon to Monks Lane for their first home game of the season on September 8.