RHYS Morgan says his Ilkley Rugby Club side faces a crucial clash this weekend which may be pivotal to the rest of their season.

The Stacks Field side entertain Paviors on Saturday after taking encouragement in defeat last time out.

Ilkley fell to a 39-23 loss at runaway Regional One North West leaders Billingham, but not after giving them a few scares during the entertaining clash.

Ilkley produced one of their best performances of the season and could call themselves unfortunate not to get a try bonus point.

Fourth-from-bottom Ilkley will be hoping for better fortunes this Saturday with the re-arranged match against Paviors. The Nottingham side sits one place and five points behind Ilkley and they have a game in hand. Ilkley are in ninth place on 27 points from the first 15 games of the season, with Paviors in hot pursuit.

Head of rugby Morgan is taking plenty of positives from his side’s performance at Billingham and wants a repeat but with a better outcome for his side.

He has also targeted a victory this weekend which he hopes with further widen the gap between his side and Scunthorpe who are in 11th place, or second-from-bottom, who have 15 points. He will also be encouraged by Paviors’ current league form after they have lost each of their last five games. This contrasts with Ilkley who have won two of their last five games.

Ilkley also has a league victory over Paviors already this season following a 21-15 triumph in Nottingham on September 17 last year.

Morgan said: “It’s a big, big game on Saturday.

“We will have to play at the level we did against Billingham last weekend, if we want to get a win this weekend.

“A win on Saturday would put us a bit clear of Scunthorpe to create a bit of daylight from the bottom teams for us.

“We beat them (Paviors) away at their place earlier in the season.

“If we can take Saturday’s form into it, then we have half a shot against Paviors.

“We are at home. You can’t take any of these games for granted. It will be a tough, tough battle on Saturday. Four points will do. That would set us up for the run-in.

“I’m hoping we will have a few injured players back this Saturday.”

Morgan hailed his side’s showing against Billingham and says he got the kind of performance he is looking for from his players during the rest of their league campaign.

He added: “Saturday was one of our best performances of the season. We did not quite get the result. We were five minutes away from getting bonus points against Billingham.

“We can take a lot of out of it. It was played on a 4G surface too. I said to the players before the game that I was looking for a good performance from them.

“If we performed well, it would put right what we were working on.

“It was tough for us on Saturday. Teams like Billingham don’t need a leg up like we gave them early in the game. Our scrummage was absolutely solid.

“We felt a few decisions did not go our way. We kept plugging away.”

After this Saturday’s clash with Paviors, Ilkley will have another home tie in the league the following weekend when they entertain Cleckheaton on Saturday, February 11.

Starting with this weekend’s game, Ilkley has seven games of the league season remaining, finishing up with a hoe encounter with York on March 18.