Scott Morgan says there's no room for error in...

National League One promotion chase.

Head coach Scott Morgan believes that Coventry can afford no more than two slips throughout the 30-game season if they are to achieve their goal of promotion from National League One.

It’s a point the former Wales second row has been hammering home to his squad over the past five weeks of warm-up games, and he will continue to stress the importance of hitting the ground at pace going into Saturday’s league opener against Wharfedale at the Butts Park Arena.

“It’s a ‘league of death’ with only one side going up,” said Morgan. “We’ll get there with two lives, three if we’re really lucky, so we can’t waste any of those this season like we have done in the past.”

A reference to last season when Cov lost two of their first four games, by two points at home to Rosslyn Park and by five points at Blaydon, and although they then went on a record-breaking winning run of 16 and were unbeaten in 18 games, the early slips proved too much of a handicap as a dip in form left them to settle for third place in the final table.

Morgan is convinced, however, that Cov are in a better position to sustain a challenge this time with an extra year’s experience and sensible recruiting – a view underlined by last week’s win over Ealing Trailfinders, who took that promotion spot last term and went up with three defeats.

“I think we’ve got a confident group of players and that result won’t have done any harm, that’s absolutely for sure,” he said.

”We’ve got good players, and it’s all about trying to get them to learn together and understand what we’ve got to do to achieve things.

“They recognise when they are making mistakes and they know when they are not, so that’s a massive step in the right direction, and they are learning that they are winning things as a group and not as individuals.

“We’ve got a talented group, the challenge the coaches have got is to get them all cohesive.

“There were no points to win in the Ealing game, but it showed what we are capable of without really doing anything fantastic or fancy. We just ground it out.

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