Cook: Stratford want to end season with a flourish
SKIPPER Jo Cook says Stratford-upon-Avon want to end the South West One East season with a flourish, with the aim of winning their remaining home games.
The Black and Whites return to league action this Saturday (3pm kick-off) after a weekend off as mid-table Wimborne make the trip to Pearcecroft.
The last outing on home soil saw Stratford come away as 26-10 winners over Swindon and Cook told the Herald the club is looking for more of the same.
“We’ll be looking to build on our home victory against Swindon and we’re definitely targeting this match as one we can win,” he said.
After Wimborne, Beaconsfield and Marlborough are the remaining home tests before the end of the campaign and Cook said it’d be a nice way to end the season with four back-to-back wins at home.
“We definitely want to finish the season with a flourish and winning our remaining home games goes a long way to achieving that,” he added.
Stratford’s last match saw them go down 41-26 at Trowbridge, but Cook took plenty of positives from the defeat and hopes to see a similar performance this weekend.
“The team showed a huge amount of heart against Trowbridge and we’d be looking to replicate that again this weekend,” he added.
“The boys worked hard from minute one to minute 80, despite numerically being down by a player for almost all the second half.”
Stratford lost the reverse meeting at Wimborne 17-12 and Cook revealed the players have been working hard to combat the Dorset side’s strengths.
“Wimborne are a physical side that like to use their pack to grind out results,” he said.
“We’ve been working hard in training this week to combat that, and in turn use this as an opportunity to utilise our young and speedy backs to go round them.”