Defeat under the Friday night lights

The A Team began their 2nd season as part of the RFU league system with a tricky Friday night fixture against Ilkeston. They had recorded two victories over the A's last season, so the boys were out to rectify this stat.

A young team was named with a few experienced heads including former club & 1st team captain Spud Taylor, 'King in the North' Josh Lister & Kieran Jackson who returned to the club from Tamworth late last season.

The game kicked off and the A's found themselves under immediate pressure after a knock on. Ilkeston used their larger pack to push Burton off the ball which allowed their backs to come crashing in probing for gaps. The A's managed to withstand this early storm, but found the Ilkeston defence a particularly tough nut to crack.

Over the next 10 minutes, Ilkeston crashed over twice after some good set piece play. 14-0.

The home team kept the ball well and had some powerful backs who were causing problems for the A's. They defiantly held out, but eventually the pressure gave and another score under the posts took the score to 21-0.

From the kick off, Burton put the home team under pressure, they pressed and probed butn lacked that final touch. A try did eventually come, with Connor Hutchinson collecting his own charge down to give the away team some hope. 21-5.

For the remainder of the half any hopes were dashed as Ilkeston scored two more tries to take the half time score to;

Ilkeston 33-5 Burton A's

The potential for an embarrassing defeat was on the cards. After stern words from Captain Riley Cassidy and Manager Graeme Fryer pumped the boys up to have a better second half.

True to their word, the second half was much better. Ilkeston found it much harder to break the defence down, and it took some relentless hammering of the try line for them to break through twice more 45-7.

Thankfully Burton had the last say, good drives from Joe Shacklock and Rhys Williams gave a good platform for Centre Kit Hodges to find young winger Cam Summers to slide into the corner to make the score 45-10.

Ilkeston went looking for another score, but were unable to do so, the referee finally blew the whistle on a disappointing result, but one in which much was learnt.

MOM went to Leo Tang, who tackled hard and was solid under the high ball.

Another tricky away fixture to Southwell next Saturday, the squad will be hoping for a better result and performance.