WILL Croker insists Bournemouth will be pulling out all the stops in a bid to finish the season with a flourish – and is still targeting third place in National League Three South West.

Head coach Croker was speaking after Lions had suffered a rare home defeat, going down 41-19 at the hands of mid-table Ivybridge at Chapel Gate on Saturday.

Croker has already started planning for next season and moved to sign four new players ahead of the February transfer deadline.

He told the Daily Echo: “They are medical students who are in their final year so we knew we weren’t going to see a lot of them this season. We signed them with a view to trying to integrate them when their studies finish and they will be available for selection after Easter.

“We are already trying to put systems in place which will take us to the next level next season and it is important we use the time to blood our players.

“We have already used 43 players this season. It has to be a squad game and, therefore, we can utilise our final four matches to put some structures in place.

“We certainly won’t be winding down. If you look at the table, we still believe we can finish third and that would be really positive after the upheaval we’ve had this season.

“We have had a new coaching team, a new squad, a new game plan, a new committee and new organisation behind the scenes. There is still everything to play for.”

Lions never recovered from a slow start against Ivybridge, the visitors forging into a 19-0 lead before a Wyn Roberts try gave them a glimmer of hope.

And although Grant Hancox converted further tries from Charlie Levey and Luke Chandler, Ivybridge were always in the driving seat and ran out convincing winners.

Croker added: "We’d had a great week’s preparation. We looked sharp, we had the right players in the right positions and we all felt genuinely very confident going into the game.

"But we got off to a terrible start. An unforced error in our 22 led to a penalty which, in turn, led to one of our players being yellow carded and them scoring within the first few minutes.

"We never really recovered. We gave away a penalty try after about 10 minutes, which was again deserved, and we never got going.

"We had passages of play where we played some really good stuff but Ivybridge were the much better team on the day and we were really disappointed."

Asked if there had been any bright spots, Croker replied: “No, in truth. We had a couple of individual performances. Jack Hennings was sensational. His work rate was fantastic and he tried to be a talisman figure but too many of our players had an off day and it was very frustrating.

"The systems we had worked on all week didn’t function. We were okay in the scrummage but our lineout failed and our backs didn’t look as menacing as they should have with what little ball they had. It was just one of those days."

Lions: Sutherland (Veneroso, 25), Everett-Bolter, Hancox, Chandler, Roberts, Chislett, Hardcastle, Tarrant, Allman (Levey, 25), Firetto, Christopher (Gunita, 50), Soden, Manning, Rees, Henning.