Not even the pain of successive one-point away defeats has shaken Kevin Maggs’ belief his Moseley side can escape another relegation battle.
Maggs watched aghast last Friday night as Moseley followed up the 22-21 reverse they suffered at Headingley, with an equally tortuous 21-20 loss at Plymouth.
Once again it was his team’s lack of discipline which cost it dear as Albion were awarded a 73rd minute penalty try to steal a win despite having been 14-3 down.
That result leaves Moseley with only one victory all season, 12 points behind the crucial eighth-place spot and staring at the prospect of a third straight end-of- season ‘group of death’.
However, Maggs remains optimistic about dodging that fate and believes positives can be found even in defeats as gut-wrenching as the one at Brickfields.
“We are making progress,” the head coach insisted. “The frustrating part is we are better than last year and we have proved that by the amount of tries we have scored and where we are in terms of that compared to the rest of the Championship.
“But we have got to do it for a full 80 minutes, unfortunately we tend to switch off and go into our shells and it comes back to bite us.
“We are certainly capable of doing it. We were in complete control of the Leeds game and you then look at what they did to Bedford. It’s unbelievable.
“Rotherham beat us and then went and beat Bristol, that’s what makes it so frustrating, we have been very good at times and very poor at times because we have not been competitive enough.
“It’s just devastating because we really could be mid-table. We could have three, four or even five wins.
“The difference is winning those close games but the longer we leave it, it is going to be more and more difficult for us.”
Once again Moseley looked threatening from first phase and their total of 21 tries is better than the return of Esher, London Scottish, Plymouth and Leeds.
And while they have the joint best disciplinary total in the division in terms of yellow and red cards, only Bedford match their total of two, the timing of the penalties they have conceded has been important.
“Penalties were the decisive factor in each of those defeats,” Maggs admitted.
“Players have those messages before games, during games, at half-time, in the second half and after games and for some reason they still do it.
“We have got to stop doing it because it is killing us. Referees are saying to us that we are positive at the breakdown and good at rolling away but there are one or two occasions when we are slow to roll away and we have been caught.”
