Bees flanker Rob Connolly believes the Damson Park strugglers can escape the relegation zone by adopting a back to basics approach.

With back-row resources stretched, the Irishman, who made his return from a shoulder injury in last Saturday’s defeat at Coventry, will become crucial to his team’s fortunes following the injury to Jack Preece and confirmation of Russell Earnshaw’s three-week suspension.

But despite the scale of Saturday’s loss, which was not reflected in a 29-13 scoreline distorted by a late try, the 29-year-old insists Bees have the blueprint to avoid a second successive relegation.

He points to the victory 21-17 over Macclesfield earlier this month as the evidence for that and says that as long as they can replicate what they did that day, they will be fine.

“I am not worried as yet,” Connolly said. “I think when we click we can be good. We showed against Macclesfield as long as we keep it simple and keep our heads, we can be effective and be a good side in this league.

“It’s just a case of individually we are trying to take that step too far, like we will get ourselves isolated instead of giving that pass. It’s about just working as a unit.

“It’s not clicking at the moment. We need a basic game plan, a foundation we can play off before we can move forward but we seem to be struggling to put that together consistently.

“(Against Macclesfield) we had two strong running centres, we hit it up, worked hard around the corner and played simple rugby, which worked for us. We don’t really need to differ from that.”

Key to that process is the performance of Preece, disrupting opposition ball on the openside and the effectiveness of Bees’ tactical kicking.

Against Macclesfield that was excellent, against Coventry it was both too frequent and poorly executed.

“I think a lot of it comes down to always being positive with things,” Connolly added.

“A couple of guys of having a habit of their head will drop after making one or two mistakes. Everyone tries to stay positive during the game, pick each other up and keep going and not have a house of cards effect where one mistake leads to another and leads to another.”

Bees will have to make sure they don’t repeat that against second-placed Fylde this weekend. They will also be without Earnshaw whose England Sevens responsibilities take him to Australia, Dubai and South Africa and mean he will next be involved in the Cinderford game on December 17,

He will miss four games, Fylde, Rosslyn Park at Portway, Blackheath and Jersey.