Ellon made the best possible start to the season with their 44-17 victory against Linlithgow on the opening day of the season before hitting the buffers at Lasswade.

Avis is looking for improvement this time out and said: “Last week was disappointing for a number of reasons, but none more so than the fact we had so many players who did not do themselves justice.

“We actually produced 35 minutes of decent rugby. Their coach said it was a much tighter game than the score suggested, but it was not the overall performance we were looking for.

“The previous week we had a great result, but there were things in that performance which concerned me and I told the players about those concerns.

“It ended up coming back to haunt us at Lasswade.

“You cannot afford to make those kind of mistakes against a strong, well-organised side. We had a meeting before training on Tuesday and spoke about what is required.

“Hopefully they will now go out and prove that last weekend was just an uncharacteristic blip.”

Ellon will be strengthened as Stuart Noble, Gordon Cumming, Bobby Kenny and Ian Redmond all return to the starting line-up while Stuart Hackett is fit enough to make the bench.

Avis said: “We were missing a few players last week but that was no excuse. Murrayfield will be confident coming here, but we need to make sure we are strong at home.

“We want to make The Meadows a place opposition teams do not relish coming to. Murrayfield are a decent side and they will play a running game, but we need to impose ourselves on them.”