Burton ‘A’ XV played host to a very hard and well-organised Cinderford side and although the score indicates a heavy loss this was not the case. From the kick-off Burton attacked the opposition line and were only kept at bay by some tremendous defending. Skipper Dave Fitchett who spearheaded many of the forward drives superbly led the Burton team. But unfortunately handling errors and some strange refereeing decisions allowed Cinderford to eventually clear their lines.

A lineout near the Burton line saw the visitors demonstrate their strength as their pack put together a rolling maul that saw them control their forward and sideways momentum to take them over the Burton line and under the posts for a converted try. Then a strange decision that saw a player, clearly offside, being allowed to charge down an attempted Burton clearance to then race forward and get the touchdown. This controversial try was also converted to give Cinderford a 14-0 lead. Burton had further issues with the decisions when Jon Crisp was yellow-carded for not rolling away in the tackle when he was clearly being held down and trapped by two Cinderford players so leaving the home side with fourteen men at the break.

Despite trailing and being a man short Burton started the second half in fantastic fashion with the backrow of Fithchett, Steve Cross and Jon Parkinson covering every inch of the pitch putting the visitors under continual pressure. This led to some good second phase ball and on one of these occasion the ball moved through the hands of Luke Peach, Lewis Brooks and Crisp to put Richard James in the clear. James kicked over the opposition defence and would clearly have easily won the race for the ball if a defender had not cynically taken him out. The referee gave a penalty try, which Peach easily converted to make the score 14-7.

A tremendous tackle by Chris Atchison on the opposition second row saw the ball be spilt and quickly snapped up good quick hands by Peach and Brooks put Crisp away to score wide out. Peach’s conversion attempt just missed and the score now stood at 14-12 to Cinderford. This could, possibly should, have been the final result but with the referee missing three blatant forward passes Cinderford scored three tries in the last ten minutes to put a lop-sided view to the score board for the final result. Burton deserved better as for the whole game they had shown fantastic character and resolve to come back from 14-0 down to get within two points, especially as they played the last twenty minutes with only fourteen men.