WOODRUSH coach Matt Elwell says these are exciting times for the club despite Saturday's 19-3 friendly defeat to Veseyans.

Elwell's charges acquitted themselves well against a side who play a division higher in Midlands Four West North and the coach said it was a vast improvement on 12 months ago.

"This time last year we would have lost by 40 or 50 points," he said. "It was closer than it looks because it was 12-3 until the last five minutes and they scored against the run of play so from then on we were chasing the game.

"But for one or two unforced errors, which was the only annoying thing, we could have scored two or three tries of our own."

Woodrush sit joint second - or third from bottom - in a contracted North Midlands South One league and Ellwell is hoping for another testing fixture at the weekend to test his side during the lengthy wait for another game in the league.

"It can be difficult to keep the players ticking over and we will go into the pool for a friendly on Saturday," he added. "The difficulty is that a lot of teams will have league fixtures and it doesn't make much sense playing against a team from our own division.

"But we have a lot of players coming into contention over the next two weeks.

"Stuart Pearson, our second team fly-half, made his debut for the first team on Saturday and did very well.

"We also had to put five or six first-teamers in our second team, who comfortably beat Veseyans seconds.

"The weekend was a really good game of rugby, it was just the sort of fixture we need between league games."