DEVONPORT Services head coach Ben Russell loves the fact that his team will be massive underdogs in their debut season in National League rugby.

Last year’s Regional One South West champions will open their National Two West campaign with a trip to Birmingham side Bournville on Saturday.

That will be the first of many trips into the unknown for the Rectory-based club.

Services have jumped up from level seven to level four in the space of just six years.

A number of the squad that helped the team out of Western West in 2018 are still involved in the current set-up and the club are staying amateur, despite coming up against teams with big budgets.

This coming season they will be mixing it with the likes of Taunton, Cinderford, Redruth, Clifton and Camborne.

Taunton have hit the headlines this summer by signing England international Ollie Deveto from Exeter Chiefs.

Devonport’s new faces may not quite be as well known in the rugby world, with Al Thomas coming in from Plymstock Oaks, former Launceston back-row forward Joe Stansfield joining from Cardiff Met and Royal Marines Henry Glidden and Freddie Elliott coming in.

Services have kept virtually all of last season’s Regional One South West title winning team and Russell is looking forward to seeing how they go in the league above.

“Everyone seems to think we are going to get spanked every game and that we are the underdogs, but for me that is brilliant,” he said.

“At the end of the day, I just want the boys to go out and play rugby.

“We have achieved something the club has never achieved before, so I just want people to enjoy themselves and go and show them what Devonport is about and why we won our league last year and why we deserve to be in this one.

“I am massively excited and it’s an exciting time for the club. It’s a brilliant challenge.

“We are going to be going up against some big dogs and some big players and I just can’t wait to see what some of these boys are going to do as they have just got better and better as each season has gone on.

“I think we have got enough quality in the squad and the thing with us we haven’t got that star – we play well as a team, which is always what we have been.

“If you look at the league we have just come from, some of the teams had five or six star players, but we just played better rugby as a team.

“The realistic goal is just to try and stay up. We will fight each week and just see how we get on.”

Services, who will be missing second-row Mike Rickard and utility back Matt Neyle for a large part of the season due to serious injuries, did not have the best pre-season results.

They lost to Plymouth Albion, Barnstaple and Launceston in their three warm-up fixtures.

“As I said before pre-season, we could lose all three games but the important thing was to improve week on week, which we did, and training has gone well,” said Russell.

“We are ready to go. Bournville away will be a nice test to see where we are at.”

Services have suffered a couple of blows ahead of Saturday’s trip to Birmingham.

With Rickard already missing, Devonport have also lost fellow powerful second-row Mark Friend due to a knee injury and both Dan Goldstone and Dylan Daley are away, meaning they will head to Bournville without a recognised experienced scrum-half.

“You would like to try and start with your strongest team in your first game in National Two,” said Russell.

“Our starting line-up will still be quite strong, but we are just going to have to adapt a little bit.”

Services do welcome Aiden Taylor back into the squad after missing the pre-season games and summer arrival Stansfield is set to start at number eight, with Matt Gregory moving to the second-row in the absence of Rickard and Friend.

REGIONAL ONE SOUTH WEST

IVYBRIDGE head coach Davy McGregor says he is ‘buzzing’ ahead of his second season at Cross-in-Hand.

McGregor labelled his first campaign in charge as a ‘transition’ year, but he is keen to build on it and get the Bridgers moving back up the Regional One South West table.

Last term they were battling with relegation until pulling away in the final couple of months of the campaign to finish ninth in the 12-team league.

This season’s Ivybridge team, who start their campaign away at Matson, will look much different to recent years.

The highly-experienced Charlie Briant, Ben Watts and Tom Scoles, who have been ever-present for years, have retired, captain Sam Furse has moved away from the area and prop George Montgomery has joined Plymouth Albion.

But the Bridgers have promoted some more youngsters, and the experienced Matt Finn has returned from Oaks, while Chey Bryce has also made the switch from Plymstock, and Albion lock Dan Collier has joined the South Hams club on loan.

“Last season was a complete transition year and you have to rebuild from that,” said McGregor.

“We had a really great session this week with 43 training, and we have two strong squads out this weekend.

“We said at the start what we wanted to do. Some people bought into it, some still had some reservations and some just don’t really care, but overall as a club we feel we are going in the right direction.

“I have always said we are a sleeping giant, but we just have to get our processes right.

“We have done our best to recruit as organically as we could. This weekend out of 38 players between our two squads we have 24 that were home-grown. I don’t think there are many clubs that can say that.

“What I am very proud of so far is the commitment to training. On average we have been getting 40 to training and with an average age of 22. There is a lot of young boys there, so it is really exciting.

“I’m really buzzing. I think we can do a hell of a job.”

On what the targets are for Ivybridge’s first and second teams, McGregor said: “I think for the Vandals (second team) it is a top four finish and we are sort of holding out for a top six finish for the seniors, but just because I have said that, it doesn’t mean if we achieve it or don’t achieve it, that doesn’t mean it’s a success or failure; it’s how we get there.

“There is no doubt we have a squad of boys that can win a lot of games.

“I think we will be more experienced for last season.

“Last year we lost four games by a score or in the last five minutes. I don’t think we are going to make those same mistakes again.

“People forget that those four games we lost in the last five minutes were all with bonus points. That would have been 20 points instead of like eight. If you add on 12 points to our league finish, we’d have been sixth or seventh.”

Matson finished one place and three points behind Ivybridge last season, but their home form was good with five of their seven victories coming at Redwell Road.

Collier comes straight into Ivybridge’s team, with Finn and Bryce also starting. Youngster James Cantin gets the nod at scrum-half, with Matt Grieveson captaining the side from fly-half.