Having comfortably won the Midlands 1 west league last season, there is great expectation for the club to do well in the Midlands Premier league. However, this is a big step up and there are some very strong teams in the league, of which Scunthorpe are one, having finished fourth last season and at one time having played in the next league up.

Although nothing much happened in the early exchanges Burton started well and asked questions of the visitors’ defence which proved to be strong. After about ten minutes Scunthorpe won a penalty on the 22 metre line for a front row offence. The full back kicked the goal to open the scoring for the visitors.

Burton then had a strong period when they put the visitors under pressure but were unable to penetrate the strong defence. They became impatient and tried to force the final pass, often losing the ball and losing ground because of this and although Burton won a series of penalties they were unable to make these count. Scrum half Chaz Bunting made a good kick ahead but under pressure from the Scunthorpe winger just failed to gather the ball and knocked it on. If he had scored at that time it might have been a different game.

Just before half time there was a mix up between full back Will Simpson and centre Dewi Williams. In hindsight Simpson should have allowed the ball to run into touch. However, it went loose and the visitors’ winger kicked the ball from the half way line to gather it and score the first try. It appears that any mistakes at this level, will be punished severely. The conversion was missed making the score at half time 0-8.

The home team started the second half badly and some poor defensive work allowed the visitors to score their second try. The kicker again failed to add the extra points. By this time the visitors were starting to dominate and Burton were penalised again for an offence at the break down. This time the Scunthorpe full back made no mistake with the kick and took the score to 0-16.

Burton then rallied and applied a bit of pressure of their own, although they were still unable to penetrate the strong Scunthorpe defence. They eventually won a penalty, which Simpson slotted over to at least get some points on the board.

This was to be their only score, however, as the visitors piled on the pressure and started to steal Burton’s lineout ball and dominate in the set scrums. Although they tried hard the tiring Burton defence could not prevent the visitors from scoring three more tries and a penalty. The last of the tries was converted to make the final score Burton 3 Scunthorpe 36