Old Patesians captain Sam Rhymes described their 24-22 defeat away from home to Stroud Rugby on Friday night as “frustrating” after conceding late on.
Old Pats were leading for the majority of the second half until a solo try from the Stroud full-back stole the game and gave them the advantage in the final minutes.
Rhymes said: “It’s frustrating when you are in control for big parts of the game and being in their red zone and not capitalising in a couple of areas.
“They were able to pounce and were quite clinical in fairness to them, and you end up losing by a couple of points.”
Old Pats struggled toward the end of the first half as they were a man down as a result of a yellow card.
Rhymes felt this was the moment Stroud were able to creep into the game.
Rhymes said: “We were playing half an hour with a man down, which isn’t ideal and they capitalised quite well. I thought for big parts, that I thought we did really well. but again, just comes down to errors and we have to work to cut them out.”
Old Pats went into the Friday night fixture in second but have since slipped to third in the table after the defeat.
But Rhymes is still maintaining the attitude that Old Pats are still in a good position given their current circumstances.
He said: “We’re in a really different end of our journey, we’ve got a whole new group of boys who are aged 18 to 26 that we haven’t got that experience yet.
“So, we’re learning on the job. We’ve just got to learn quickly that we can’t give team’s chances, otherwise we’ll get punished.”
Given Old Pats are at the top end of the table, Rhymes is constantly keeping a close eye at the table leaders, Smiths Rugby, who are now running away with the league somewhat.
Rhymes said: “I think we have to look at them in a very different way because they’ve played really well. They’ve built their success over a long period of time.
“So for us, let’s just keep doing what we’re doing, and it’ll come when it comes, when it does it’ll be really good. We’re still punching above our weight in a quite a tough League, so we are happy.”
Old Pats will play Gloucester Old Boys next on Saturday, February 1 at home, the captain described where the side needs to improve to get the result over the line.
He said: “Probably just ball retention and better overall discipline. We give teams too many entries into our 22 and we try to knock the ball on in the wide channels, which is one thing we are focusing on.”
