TROWBRIDGE chief Steve Ojomoh reckons his team were handed a harsh reminder of the importance of ‘keeping the scoreboard ticking over’ as they lost their season-opener to the Newbury Blues last weekend.

The hosts went down 24-3 at Doric Park but Ojomoh reckons that the weighty margin of their defeat fails to tell the whole story.

The Trowbridge head coach was pleased with plenty of aspects of his team’s performance, but was left to bemoan a number of deficiencies in their decision-making, particularly where point-scoring was concerned.

“The disappointing thing is that the score doesn’t tell the whole story. We were 5-3 down at half-time,” said Ojomoh.

“The referee is a nice guy but he had a poor afternoon. They won a line-out but it touched one of their guys on the way out and then, I think all of our players could see that it was knocked on but they went on to score from that and that was the game.

“Those kind of things are what I call momentum-changers. But the moral of the story is that you have to keep the scoreboard ticking, be it three, five or seven points.

“I know that it’s easier from the sidelines and I’ll always trust my kicker or captain because they’re in the heat of the battle but we chose not to kick for points a lot of the time.

“We paid the price for not keeping that scoreboard ticking over but it’s only the first game and we’ll learn from it. I was actually pretty happy with our performance.”

Josh Winfield crossed the line first for Newbury whilst Lloyd Davis’ penalty set the half-time score but when Josh Bartlett grabbed his team’s second try from a quickly-taken line-out, which was converted by Dan Thorne, the visitors led 12-3.

Left wing Bartlett then went on to score twice more in the last ten minutes, with Dan Thorne adding the extras to his second try, to secure the Blues a bonus point.