Helensburgh Rugby’s head coach Adam Hart says he’s seeing improvements in his side’s performances despite a 31-15 home defeat to Garnock in their opening league fixture last Saturday.

The visitors scored several tries via the set-piece, with two scores coming off the scrum and the others coming off a rolling maul from a lineout and through pick and goes.

Helensburgh scored via Scott Simmons and Kris Owens in the second half.

But the Grizzlies head coach said the opposition’s style of play was at times a little too physical after prop Liam Flannagan was taken off injured.

He said: “We played well, much better than we did in the last two games and we’re improving every week which is good.

“They were just big up front and very direct. They were just doing one man pass out from the ruck style of rugby so there was not much we could do to contain that as they’re a lot bigger than us.

“Our set-piece started off really well and then our tighthead Liam, our most experienced prop, had to come off as he’d got concussion after being punched in the back of the head after a collapsed scrum.”

But former referee Hart was not one to point the finger at the official.

He added: “It wasn’t the cleanest game in the world – but the problem is there’s only him. He hasn’t got two sets of eyes to call upon on the sidelines, so he’s trying to follow the play while watching everything else. It’s impossible.”

One of the numerous positives Hart took from the game was the new approach they were taking into games.

Their training session now begins with 15 minutes in the classroom, before the players are allowed to go out and play.

Hart added: “7-7.15 for training now is tactical analysis – on Tuesdays we look at the video from the weekend and go over it, and on Thursday we set out the game plan and then for the rest of training we go out and work on the key points.

“It’s to get the guys to think about the game a bit more before heading out and not just doing what they think they should be doing, but to actually think about it..

“You could see that at the weekend. We knew the Garnock pack was going to be big so we needed to move them around and the back three won’t be as strong as ours as that’s where one of our strengths lie.”

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“We were kicking quite a lot of ball from hand and putting them under pressure and that’s where one of our tries came from.

“It was a really well worked try from a tactical point of view as well as skills with the prop using the draw and give and the winger taking the high ball.”