SOUTHEND’S director of rugby Chris Green takes his team to Clifton tomorrow warning them not to be fooled by their hosts’ indifferent start to the season.

Clifton have lost all four of their matches so far.

But Green feels that will count for nothing this weekend.

“I don’t think you can read too much in to Clifton’s results so far and I’ll be telling that to the players,” said Green.

“We can’t be fooled by them not having won because they have played some of the league’s best sides.

“They’ve had Hartpury, Shelford and Henley who should all be up there at the end of the season.

“And they only lost to Hartpury by six points.

“That shows we’re in for a difficult game and Clifton are always tough to play against anyway so we will have to play well to get a good result.”

Southend have made a mixed start to the season themselves, winning two of their first four matches.

The last of those victories came against Lydney at the weekend.

But Green is still demanding an improvement on that display.

“It was a good result but the performance wasn’t quite there and we’ve been working on things to improve,” said Green.

“The biggest thing we need to do better is keeping the ball because we keep on popping it up.

“You can work on things like structure of play but if you don’t have the ball then all that doesn’t matter.

“We’re not far away though and things are clicking together for us.

“When we fully get it together I think we’ll hammer someone and hopefully that will come soon.”

Southend have no new injury concerns for the clash with Clifton this weekend and they welcome back row Sam Fombo and prop Luke Irvine into the squad this weekend.