DIRECTOR of rugby Budge Pountney insists Bournemouth are on the road to recovery, with Saturday's game against fellow strugglers London Irish Wild Geese the perfect opportunity to get back to winning ways.

Last weekend’s 22-17 loss to Chinnor made it nine National Two South losses on the bounce.

But despite their wretched run of results, Pountney believes recent performances on the pitch give him reason for optimism.

The week before they only lost out by three points, this time to Southend, and while the winning habit has recently proved elusive, Pountney backed his players to come good.

“There are great signs there in terms of performance levels and getting back to where we need to be,” he said.

“We played a lot of good rugby against Chinnor and it has been like that for the past month or so.

“We are just asking them to concentrate on individual performances and keep plugging away.

“The green shoots of recovery are there – we’ve just got to cross that line.

“It’s about developing that mentality of winning, which perhaps we haven’t got at the moment.

“It will be a big game against the Wild Geese. They play a similar type of rugby to us and they like to play so it will be a good challenge.”

The game against the Wild Geese is particularly important with Saturday's hosts sitting just two points and one place above Bournemouth in the league.

Bournemouth also hold the slight advantage having triumphed 45-25 earlier in the season, and Pountney targeted it as a chance to move up from their current spot of third bottom in the league.

“It is a great opportunity for us to claw back some points and that’s what we’ll be trying to do,” he said.

“But we have to concentrate on ourselves and the results and consistency will then start to come.”

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