Leicester Lions 11 pts Luctonians 5

LUCTONIANS director of rugby Alex Davidson was far from dispirited despite a narrow opening day National Two North defeat at Leicester Lions.

"We finished the game looking much the fitter and stronger," he said.

"Leicester look as strong as they did last year and so, comparing our result up here last year, when we lost 45-21, we have closed the gap."

Luctonians had to make a late change to their planned side with Joe Doyle's transfer registration from Ludlow not having been processed, allowing the return of Tom Jones at fly-half.

"Tom still has some defensive frailties and they ran at him a couple of times early on and scored a try after two minutes," said Davidson.

"We then covered that and they didn't cause us many problems - the problem was that we got into their 22 on around 15 occasions but only came away with one score."

Devon Constant went over for the early try but the only other points of the first half came from the boot of Jon Williams who added a penalty on 26 minutes.

Williams was successful with a second kick eight minutes into the second period but Luctonians plugged away and got back into the game when Alex Rumsey went over for a try.

After that, however, defences remained on top and there were no further scores.

Luctonians head for Stourbridge, who are expected to be one of the division's front-runners, on Saturday.

"They had a difficult game and a narrow win at Harrogate last weekend," said Davidson.

"But we have Jimmy Norris available for selection this weekend and one or two other players coming into the mix."