GLENN Delaney has learned the harsh lessons of last season which ended in an anti-climax for Nottingham Rugby.

The club spent most of the season in the top four of the Championship but after beating Exeter Chiefs, who eventually won the coveted place in the Premiership, in their first play-off game, they were a spent force and never won a game after that.

It was the first time that the play-off format was used and the Green and Whites' paper-thin squad just could not cope with the extra games.

Nottingham lost their first match of this season at home to London Welsh but then travelled to Birmingham and Solihull Bees and came away with a convincing victory.

"I'm reasonably happy with our start," said Delaney. "We know we are not firing on all cylinders but we have taken a different responsibility to conditioning this time round.

"We are not trying to be ready for now. We want to be ready for the play-offs and that's what we want to concentrate on."

Injuries and re-calls for the dual-registered players hindered the progress of the team last season.

November was a particularly tough month and their cause wasn't helped when they were forced to play a home match at Welford Road because of the intransigence of Munto Finance, the then owners of Notts County.

Bad weather also forced games to be abandoned and they then had to play catch-up before the play-offs.

"Last season, we were not ready for the play-offs because we were absolutely burned out and it wasn't entirely our fault," said Delaney.

"We had to play nine games in 34 days and it killed the squad.

"We are trying to be a bit more responsible this time so we started later in our pre-season. We are not going to be as cohesive at this point in time as we will be later."

Delaney admits it was very disappointing to lose the first home game at Meadow Lane as he targets those as must-win fixtures.

He said: "I always target all our home games as a pre-requisite. You win your home games as a starter for ten.

"There are going to be some very tough home games but the reality is, if you win your home games, then you are going to be in a very good position in the play-offs.

"That's purely mathematical. If you win half of your games then you are going to be looking pretty good.

"You want to win more than half your games because, my mantra has always been, we've got to have a winning season, which means winning more games than obviously losing.

"The reality is, we have always done that all the time I've been here and, if we continue to do that, we are going to be in good shape come the end of it."

After leading by six points at half-time against London Welsh, Nottingham couldn't contain the Exiles in the second half.

"It was pretty frustrating because, when we have a six point lead, I expect us to close those games out," said Delaney.

"They were scoring tries and we were kicking penalties. They gave so many penalties away, Jimmy Arlidge just kept putting them through the posts.

"But, we didn't clear our 22, and they had so much possession and pressure in that area, they were bound to score.

"The reality is that we have to be better at relieving that pressure. That's where it started and finished for me against London Welsh.

"I'm always disappointed to lose but we shouldn't have lost that game.

"It was a game we could have won by being a little bit brighter and executing a little bit better.

"I expected to win against the Bees but you can never take anything for granted. I should hope we have better quality than they have.

"To be four tries up at the half-time showed that we were probably the better side but we were still a bit loose in defence and it's an area we've got to keep working on.

"We didn't complete enough of our tackles first up so we've some pretty hard training to do over the next few days to make sure we are ready for Plymouth on Sunday."