ANTHONY O’Riordan is confident Colchester Rugby Club have everything in place to make another sustained promotion push, next season.

The Mill Road club fell just short of a top-two finish in London North division one this season, ending up third to miss out on a return to the National League.

However, Colchester went through the entire campaign without suffering a home defeat, scoring more than 1,000 points in the process.

And Blacks’ director of rugby O’Riordan feels the qualities they showed over a sustained period bode well for their chances of success when the 2018-19 campaign gets underway, in September.

O’Riordan told the Daily Gazette: “We should be in the mix next season and close to achieving our goal.

“We’re hoping to strengthen the squad, year on year.

“We’ve missed opportunities like any other amateur club to sign players who have opted to sign for a lower-level club for money.

“We have some very good recruitment opportunities in the pipeline and they come off, we’ll be in a very good position, next year.

“But even if they don’t, there’s not one part of me that thinks we don’t have the things in place to get promotion.

“I’m over the moon with the way that this season went.

“Our aim at the beginning of the season was to get promotion and we lost that opportunity around Christmas time.

“But once we knew that promotion was out of the question, there were other things that we wanted to achieve such as staying unbeaten at home throughout the whole of the season.

“In years gone by, we might have folded when the opportunity to get promotion has gone.

“Because of that, I’m immensely proud of that achievement.

“A lot of teams could have gone off track knowing that they couldn’t go up but the way we bounced back from that was great and finishing third, along with our home run, made a statement about our character.

“Seeing a group of players come together who don’t get paid to play and gel as well as they have to take the game by the scruff of the neck was fantastic.

“It’s very positive and it proves that we have the players and tools in the box to do well.”

Colchester will lose the services of key pair Will Brown and Joe Colcomb, who both impressed on their debut seasons for the club.

Fullback Brown is off to New Zealand before he starts University in September while Colcomb is taking a year out before University.

O’Riordan said: “I don’t mind seeing players go after they have progressed the team so well, like they have.”

He added: “There are a lot of rugby clubs out there who get caught up in the hustle and bustle of semi-pro rugby and lose sight of what the club is about.

“There are constraints on us as an amateur club and it’s my job as a coach and director of rugby to promote young players.

“There’s no better breeding ground for young, ambitious players than Colchester Rugby Club.

“It’s a nice place to learn your trade as a young player.”