Bury St Edmunds will be looking to build on their two recent encouraging performances, against Redruth and Taunton, when they travel to the south coast to take on Worthing Raiders in the National League Two South today (kick-off 2pm).

Ollie Smith’s men beat Redruth 27-14 at The Haberden a fortnight ago, before being unlucky to lose 24-10 at third-placed Taunton last weekend.

That was the Wolfpack’s sixth away defeat on the trot, following previous losses on the road at Henley Hawks, Redingensians Rams, Cinderford, Old Redcliffians and Wimbledon.

And while last Saturday’s loss to Taunton was not without encouragement, for head coach Smith, the 32-12 defeat at lowly Wimbledon from three weeks ago remains a bitter pill to swallow.

“That defeat at Wimbledon still hurts me!” insists Smith, ahead of today’s trip to West Sussex.

“It will take another couple of good performances for me to forget that match, and to put it down to just being a blip.

“But we’ve put in two good performances in a row now, having beaten Redruth and then being not far off winning again at Taunton last Saturday.

“Barring a couple of decisions, that probably went against us, we could have ended up winning that game. There were two or three instances where we thought we got the ball over the line, not withstanding the one try that we scored. But they were not given.

“This weekend will be a tough ask. We had a good win over Worthing earlier in the season, although they scored a few points against us during the last five minutes,” added Smith ,with reference to Bury’s 37-30 home win over Worthing in late October.

Worthing are 10th in the table, three places and just five points behind Bury, who are six points adrift of the top five.

Bury’s last win away from home came at Canterbury (29-21) on October 28. Canterbury are due at The Haberden next Saturday.

Captain Liam McBride and scrum-half Jake Ashby are both away on international duty with Holland this weekend.

BURY: Smith, King, Coutts, Scholes, Mitchell, Comin, Stapleton (C), Uru. Merolle, Honey, Taylor, Kohler, Corcoran, Duplenne, Rouse. Replacements: Greco, Bixby, Edison, Browne, Harrison.