Great Away Win for Burton

Burton travelled to South Yorkshire on Saturday for the Midlands Premier league fixture against Doncaster Phoenix. Both sides tried to attack from the start but both defended well with Burton perhaps having slightly more possession. However, the home side seemed to have more pace especially in the backs and it was not long before this resulted in a score. The fly half threw an inside pass to the very mobile loose head prop who burst through the centre and found his winger in support to go over in the corner. The conversion was missed.

This spurred the visitors into action and although they were finding it difficult to penetrate the defence eventually full back Will Simpson made a break and scored under the posts. He converted his own try to add the extra two points and put Burton into the lead.

Burton stretched their lead immediately from the restart. Lock Ed Henry caught the ball from the kick, charged forward and offloaded to Hooker James Davies who also charged forward and found scrum half Chaz Bunting who shrugged off several tackles to score. Simpson again added the extra points.

The home team went on the attack again but the Burton defence held on for the remaining few minutes of the half without conceding any more scores. The score at half time was 5-14.

Phoenix started the second half where they had left off the first, attacking Burton’s line. However the scrum half failed to use a an overlap and then threw a poor pass which was intercepted by centre Alex Nesbitt on his own 5 metre line he ran to the halfway and although he was running out of steam winger Julian Bogner was on hand to receive the pass and run the rest of the way to score a try on his debut. Simpson again converted.

The superior pace of the Doncaster backs now began to tell, and a simple missed tackle allowed the centre to run from the 22 metre line and score. The conversion was again missed.

Burton were now tiring as a result of all the hard work they had been doing, both in defence and ball carrying. They were therefore unable to prevent the home team from scoring a further two tries. Both of these were from a combination of good running and handling by the Doncaster backs. The second one was converted to take the home side into the lead for the first time in the match.

Burton were not finished yet however and the forwards and backs combined to take the ball into the Doncaster half where the home team were penalised for an offence at the breakdown. The reliable boot of Simpson kicked the ball between the posts to take back the lead.

Burton then played sensible rugby and kept the ball tight, just driving up the middle. The last five minutes seemed interminable but despite a couple of scares when they lost the ball they managed to hang on for a win. Burton deserved the win because of the hard work they put in but they will be relieved that the Doncaster kicker had an off day. However, the win earned them four valuable league points and lifts them up one place to ninth in the league table. The final score was Burton 24 Doncaster Phoenix 22.