Concern growing as Newport slip

The Forton Road men went down 35-10 to South Leicester on Saturday to slip into the bottom two in the table.

"We are massively concerned about the position and these are difficult and testing times," said Price.

"The frustrating thing is that we don't think the league is any stronger than last season. We knew it was going to be tough with players leaving at the end of last season but we expected to be doing better than this.

"The bright news is that players will hopefully be coming back from injury either side of Christmas.

"But we could have no complaints about Saturday. We were well and truly second best."

The majority of the damage was done in the first half on Saturday, with South Leicester running in four tries.

Tries from Toby Mann and Tomasi Tanumi gave Newport some cheer after the break, but the hosts ran in two further tries and kicked a penalty and conversion to run out comfortable winners.

Luctonians gained their first ever win at Luton with a nail-biting 13-12 victory.

"It was a superb performance and an all round team victory" said spokesman Robin East after his team's fourth successive win.

"We had to defend desperately in the first half but after the turn around our pack turned to take control. Luton had been averaging 40 points a game but this was the first time they failed to score a try"

Luctonians found themselves 9-0 behind at the interval after conceding three penalties. But tries from Jamie Simpson, who also kicked a penalty, and South African Leon Mells completed the second half turnaround.

Hereford crashed to their fourth defeat of the campaign when they went down 31-18 to high flying Hinckley at Wyeside. Fly half Dean Powell scored all the Hereford points.