Why Portsmouth must keep calm with heat rising as wait for first London 3 South West win goes on

Old Georgians became the latest team this season to record a victory over them, as Portsmouth went down 36-15 on their travels to make it five defeats from as many matches.

Richards believes his squad are placing themselves under too much pressure to turn things around which is causing them to make mistakes.

The Portsmouth head coach felt his men were at fault for all five tries they conceded in the Old Georgians defeat.

Yet Richards acknowledged the longer the wait for a first win of the season stretches then the higher anxiety levels within his squad will grow.

He said: ‘We’re a team low on confidence making a lot of unforced errors. I think if you look back at the game (at Old Georgians), every try they scored came directly from a mistake we made or a penalty we gave away. That’s why it’s so frustrating, although they took their tries well, they were presented with opportunities.

‘I think pressure does funny things to people and you can see the boys are desperate to try to put things right, with that desperation comes moments where they lack clarity about what they should be doing on the field, we made so many turnovers on Saturday but after we turned the ball over we would then throw a pass that hits someone’s chest.

‘When you’re so desperate to put things right – we’re causing more problems than when if you were to just stand back from it a little bit.’

Elliott Worrall and Tom Hopkins ran in unconverted first half tries for Portsmouth who trailed 19-10 at the interval.

But Old Georgians secured 17 unanswered points soon after the restart while Portsmouth also had two players yellow carded in the space of two minutes to add to their woes.

Anthony Fooks did at least force his way over late on but the visitors were on the end of a 36-15 defeat.

Third-bottom Portsmouth head to place-below and fellow winless side Alton in a crucial clash on Saturday.