Defeat to Abu Dhabi Harlequins at the beginning of the month left a sour taste in the mouth of Stephen Ferguson, but the big Northern Irish forward says he and his Dubai Exiles teammates won’t let it derail their season.

Exiles began the 2017/18 campaign in blistering fashion, blowing away Dubai Eagles and rivals Hurricanes in the opening two weeks – putting up 125 points in the process.

They have been brought crashing back down to earth since, however, losing their next three fixtures against Jebel Ali Dragons, Bahrain and Quins – by a combined margin of 11 points.

The season is now on a sevens hiatus until mid-December, which is even more frustrating for Ferguson who was impressive at Zayed Sports City on his comeback from an operation to remove an abscess on his arm.

“It feels amazing to be out there with all the boys and I got to play against my mate Sempy (Quins scrum-half Andrew Semple) too, from Derry, but it was a gutting loss,” said Ferguson, 29, who has more reason than most to be angry at the stop-start nature of this season’s fixture list.

“The rest of the guys will play sevens now but for the bigger guys who won’t, we need to keep the reps going because you don’t want to go back to square one again.

“I’m only getting back now and I’m not going to play sevens, I’m 135kg. I’ll do a mini pre-season and I think a lot of the

other big guys in our team will do that too, because we don’t want to lose what we’ve built up.

“We’ve been so close in our defeats and we don’t want to take our foot off the gas now before Christmas. We’ll still be training twice a week and be doing a bit more sevens training now which will be beneficial for all of us.”

After Exiles had begun to banish the ghosts of last season with their roaring start to the campaign, Ferguson is adamant the three latest losses won’t impact the squad.

“We’re definitely not getting derailed,” he said.

“Every loss has been closer and we’re feeling like we’ll come through this as a team. Our defence this year has been exceptional. Denis (Hurley, assistant coach) has come in and we’ve all bought in to what he’s teaching us. Our attack (against Quins) was better than it was two weeks ago.”