Rayer rings changes for Bedford before Esher clash. Your Rugby News

Rayer rings changes for Bedford before Esher clash

10
Sep

Posted by: Everything Rugby : Midlands, The Championship

Bedford Blues have rung in the changes as they prepare for the visit of Esher to Goldington Road on Saturday afternoon.

The Blues followed up their opening day 51-3 victory against Plymouth with a heartbreaking stoppage time 19-16 defeat away at Rotherham last Sunday.

Things are unlikely to get any easier this weekend as the Blues go into a clash against an Esher side who recorded a famous victory over Bristol last weekend. There will also be some added spice for Mike Schmid�s team who will certainly want to forget their last visit to Goldington Road in 2009 when they were relegated to the third tier of English rugby.

The Blues will be without injured players Ben Lewitt, Ian Vass, Sam Walsh and Robin Boot, but they will also be missing Laurence Ovens who suffered a slight mild concussion against Rotherham. Another unavailable player is hooker Chris Locke who has joined Loughborough Students on loan to gain some valuable game time.

Looking ahead to the game Blues director of rugby Mike Rayer said: �The game against Rotherham certainly brought us back down to earth and showed that we really need to be more clinical and ruthless when opportunities present themselves.

�I wasn�t massively disappointed with the performance that we put in at Clifton Lane, but we need to address aspects of our discipline that let us down a little bit and cost us a victory.

�We�ve made some changes this week as lads like Sean Tomes, Gregor Gillanders, Joe Clark, James Short, Owen Farrell and Handre Schmidt have been putting in some big performances on the training field and deserve to be in the starting line-up.

�Esher are a fantastic model of club rugby and last week�s result against Bristol just shows that they deserve to be in this league and were very unlucky to have gone down when they did.

�That said, our boys know that they let the game slip out of their grasp last week and they have to put in a big performance in front of the home fans to regain that momentum that we achieved against Plymouth.�

Starting line-up:

15. James Pritchard (c)

14. Handre Schmidt

13. Duncan Taylor

12. Tom Bedford

11. James Short

10. Owen Farrell

9. Darryl Veenendaal

1. Dan Seal

2. Joe Clark

3. Phil Boulton

4. Mike Howard