Canterbury coach Matt Corker says the biggest step is the last one as they look to kick-start their season.

The city club are 12th in National 2 East after a 32-20 defeat by Old Albanians last weekend.

Slow starts and errors have undermined some good performances from Corker’s men, who have played well enough to have more points on the board.

They’ll keep working at it, with a trip to ninth-placed Guernsey this Saturday.

“Sometimes the last step is the biggest one,” said Corker. “We’re looking for the final piece of the jigsaw.

“A lot of games we’ve finished strongly and scored two or three tries in the last 10 or 15 minutes.

“We need to extend that period and start games like that. Let’s show the opposition what we’re capable of.”

The Albanians loss was a third successive defeat for Canterbury and means they’ve won only three of their 11 league games this season.

“It’s quite a challenging time at the moment,” said Corker. “There’s some real positives in our performances but we’re not getting the results.

“Make no bones about it, I’m not happy with our league position. When things aren’t going your way, you keep pounding the rock and working as hard as you possibly can to get the results you want.

“I’d be worried if there weren’t some really positive things in the way we’re playing.

“Some of attacking play is electric - opposition coaches have been very complimentary - but we need an 80-minute performance to win games.

“We’ve struggled in the first five or 10 minutes of games and that puts on the back foot straight away. No one means to makes a mistake and on that I need I think we need to focus on our communication.

“Sometimes people are trying to fix it on their own but the only way to solve it is as a team.

“The errors we’re making aren’t because we’re timid or holding back, it’s because we’re trying too hard.

“We praise effort because you can’t coach that. It’s the minimum we expect and the players bring it every week. We need to help them get a better understanding of the best way to do things.

“We are where we are in the table because of the results we’ve had. It would be easy for me to pick a number in the league table and say this is what we should be.

“Our real focus is week-by-week and turning our good performances into results.”

Canterbury fly to Guernsey on Saturday morning and are staying overnight.

Corker hopes the trip will be good for morale and help them improve their fortunes.

“People have such busy lives now that sometimes it’s hard to get some extra time together,” he said.

“It’s an opportunity to have some good conversation, spend some valuable time together as a group and to make good memories. It can only help.

“We went to Brighton in the summer, which was good, and I’m hoping this will be similar.”