By Roger Clarke - Birmingham Mail
December 16 2005

Pertemps Bees players have now got two weeks off to "lick their wounds" in the words of director of rugby Phil Maynard, ready to do battle again against Nottingham on the Tuesday after Christmas. It is a match when winger Nick Baxter will be hoping to reach his own personal milestone of 150 league tries in the National League - he scored try 149 in the defeat at Doncaster last weekend - and a match when Maynard will be hoping to see his Jekyll and Hyde side show consistency over 80 minutes.

Nottingham are four points above Bees at the bottom of National One among the clutch of part-time clubs who are battling it out below the fulltime teams in the top half of the table.

Although it has not yet been confirmed, it is widely expected that with National One being expanded by two teams next season, there will be no relegation come spring.

That might bring some relief this year from those at the bottom but the part-timers are becoming fewer in number and each year it is the part-timers who are the main protagonists in the battle to survive.

Maynard is already working on how to readdress the balance.

He said: "We have already made some decisions on how we are going to restructure our approach especially with regard to away games.

"The monied clubs will buy better players who are better conditioned and better prepared and even the worst coaches in the world have got an advantage, simply with the amount of time they have to prepare.

"In sport it has to be a reasonably level playing field to compete. We are only seeing what we are seeing with Chelsea in football. They finally broke the mould of Man United and Arsenal simple by outspending them.

"I am not proposing that we do that because we are in no position to achieve it bu we are looking at extra training sessions and how we can move forward.

"We have to do something radical to compete. We are already looking at the squad for next year and what the calls on that squad will be."

Maynard does not have a pot of extra money hidden away but said he will be looking at a redistribution of funds in the long term.

He said: "We bucked the trend because we were better organised and we had better players than we have now and a lot of them have gone on to sign Premiership contracts.

"We just have to redress the balance by better preparation of our team."