SOUTHEND Saxons’ centre Sonny Gay has urged his side not to dwell on Saturday’s 52-18 defeat at Taunton.

The setback was Southend’s third in succession and kept them just one place and six points above the National Two South drop zone with only two games to go.

But Gay, one of Saxons’ try scorers in the second half, is now urging an immediate improvement in this weekend’s crunch clash with Bishop’s Stortford.

“There's not much to say about the game on Saturday other than we didn't attack well, silly mistakes cost us and that they took their chances very well so we need to think about the next game now,” said Gay.

“The relegation battle is too close for comfort and we have got a massive game this weekend which we need to get something from.

“We haven't beat Bishop’s Stortford before and they are second in the league going for play-off spot.

“But we need to really have a positive week and we all need to turn up on Saturday for what will be our biggest game of the season.”

Southend will also need to do better than against Taunton as their hosts never looked troubled at the weekend.

Two tries from winger Jack Claydon inside the opening 15 minutes put them in front before second row Ben Turner also touched down.

Gary Kingdom added a conversion before Southend got off the mark with a penalty from Tom Ashton which cut third placed Taunton’s lead to 17-3 at half-time.

After the break, Taunton extended their lead with a try from scrum half Lewis Webb which Kingdom added converted before Southend’s own number nine, Ed Hoadley, who was making his debut, bagged a try.

However, Taunton piled on the pressure with winger Nick Mason, prop Jack Stanley, fly-half Toby East and Webb all scoring tries which Kingdom converted.

But, just before the last of those efforts, Gay had also touched down for Southend before their prop forward Aston Bevans-Royston went over in the last minute of the match.

However, by then the damage had already been done and Saxons’ director of rugby Chris Green felt his side were guilty of making too many mistakes.

“We made a lot of errors in attack and set piece and hardly won a line-out all day,” said Green.

“If you go two scores down against a top three side then you are always going to struggle to get back into it and if you compound that with our error count then there was only going to be one winner.

“We need to recover from this now for Saturday’s game. We have beaten most of the top six at home already this season so we just have to take that confidence into the match with Bishop’s Stortford.

“But we will also need to reduce our error count drastically.”

Southend Saxons: Ashton, Nash, Gay, Vaughan, Driver, Burr, Hoadley, Fardell, Bloomberg, Bevans-Royston, Chesney, Legge, Fombo, Jackson, Hudson

Replacements: Meads, Branch, Strachan, Smith & Guess