Player-coach Matt Shields is refusing to get carried away - despite his Carlisle Rugby Club team sitting 13 points clear at the top of North One West.

The Warwick Road outfit resume their league programme at home to third-placed Douglas today (2.15pm kick-off) after a three-week Christmas break.

Shields’ side suffered one of their two league losses to the Isle of Man-based club, so will have revenge on their minds.

But that 28-24 defeat in September proved to be a minor blip for Carlisle in a superb first-half of the campaign.

"Yeah, it went really well. We have put in a lot of new systems and structures, completely overhauling what we did last season. The lads have bought into it really well," said Carlisle-born Shields.

“We are still learning. We are still learning the way we want to play and develop our game plan.

"The attitude of everybody has been fantastic, and I think that’s been reflected in our form so far this season.

"If you break down the results, some of the matches have been quite close games, but we are coming out on the right side of them, and that shows the mental toughness and mental resilience that, potentially, wasn’t quite there last season.

"Winning breeds confidence and we are getting on the right side of results now.

"That’s down to the hard work of the players who are buying into what we are putting in place as a coaching team."

The 27-year-old, who represented the likes of Newcastle Falcons’ academy, Harlequins, Edinburgh and Rotherham Titans before returning to his home-town club in July, added: "Look, if you had said to me at the start of the season you will be 13 points clear at Christmas, I’d have been very happy with that.

"But at the end of the day, we are only just over halfway through the season. In the grand scheme of things, 13 points is three wins or two wins, with bonus points, and a draw.

"So, we’re not far enough ahead that we’ll breeze it [to win the title]. There are some tough games to come.

"We have the two teams we lost against to play back at Carlisle, so we are looking forward to that.

"Certainly one of those games, we feel we should have won against Douglas. We had three tries disallowed.

"Northwich will be another tough game and, when we played them, they were hands down better than us and deserved to win.

"We are relishing those two teams, in particular, visiting Warwick Road in the second-half of the season."

Having not yet been able to name an unchanged team so far this term, Shields admitted he was still looking for more a bit consistency, but also praised the depth of his squad.

He said: "It’s funny because you hear lots of teams at this level complain about injuries and that’s the reason for their form dropping off.

"Well, we’ve not been able to name an unchanged side all season.

"We have used more players than most clubs in the league. We have had some horrid patches of unavailability. But the lads stepping in know what is expected of them, and they have performed really, really well.

"Now, we have a squad of players that makes it hard for me to pick our best starting 15. The thing for us is looking for a bit of consistency.

"When we have played to our potential, we have absolutely blown teams away. But the struggle for us is getting that level of consistency.

"A large part of that is down to the injuries and unavailability we have had but, having said that, the lads who have stepped in have done really, really well. That’s why we are coming out of the right side of close games.

"We are starting to develop a mentality of staying in the fight. If we keep going the way we are going, we will win the league."