Archers frustrated as victory eludes them

NOTTINGHAM fell short in the second half as they suffered a 33-28 home defeat against London Scottish.

- By ROBIN GRIFFITHS

The Archers took two points from their first home Championship match for over two months but it should have been more.

Trailing by five points at the break after playing into the wind in the first half, the Archers dominated territory in the second period. Having allowed London Scottish to extend their lead soon after the restart, Nottingham fought back to take a narrow lead.

However, the visitors also scored with their only other meaningful attack of the half and played intelligently to see out the victory.

Marcus Ramage made his first start of the season, after coming off the bench last week in the heavy defeat at Ealing following a long injury layoff and put in a player of the match performance. While frustrated with the result, he also saw positives in the performance.

"I'm bitterly disappointed that we lost," said Ramage.

"For large parts of the game we did really well but there were just a couple of slip-ups. We didn't capitalise when we really needed to, especially when we were in the score zone, or at least in their half.

"Hopefully, we can take a bit of momentum from it, particularly after last week's result. So it's much improved but more to go."