NEIL Shillingford was pleased with Dudley Kingswinford's performance despite defeat at league leaders Newport (Salop).

DK suffered a 41-14 loss last Saturday but the club's director of rugby is determined to take the positives out of the contest.

He said: "The score didn't reflect the game and we were 19-14 behind at half time.

"We had to make a few changes before the game due to injuries in the warm up and then picked up a yellow card early on. But we again showed that we can trouble the top sides.

"We decided to go there and try to learn something about ourselves rather than worrying about them too much. We decided to try and run them off the park and to some extent that worked for large parts.

"It was always going to be a tough ask because they have six or seven individuals that can change a game.

"I've got to be happy with the performance overall and hopefully we can carry that forward."

DK will host Stoke-on-Trent at Heathbrook this Saturday (3pm kick-off) with no new injury concerns.

"The lads came off against Newport saying how much of an enjoyable game it was, " added Shillingford. "We want to try and end well to take some confidence into next season but we just try and build on that performance when Stoke visit this weekend."