Burn seal important win

After a recent poor run Burn secured a much needed 28-3 win against Firwood Waterloo.

Burn left it late, but with the last play of the game they managed to score their fourth try to ensure they got the full 5 points for their days work.

From the start Burn were pressuring Waterloo, from a catch and drive within their opponents 22 Burn thought they had scored, but the ball was just knocked on as Burn went for the line. However, from the resulting scrum Burn drove Waterloo back and were awarded a scrum of their own, from this Burn got a shove on, Sam Gale went from the back of the scrum and just had long enough arms to stretch and score. Leon Fifield kicked the conversion. Waterloo came back at Burn and on 20 minutes they had some sustained pressure on the Burn line, but the Burn defence held up and managed to relieve the danger. Then on 25 minutes a Waterloo centre was shown a yellow card for a high tackle, however there were some verbals towards the ref and as a result a second yellow was shown resulting in a red. Burn quickly took advantage of the number supremacy with their second try on 28 minutes, from a penalty within their own 22 Waterloo missed touch, Leon Fifield gathered the ball and feed back inside to Tom Burtonwood who brushed aside a defender enabling him to run on to score. Fifield then added the extra points. Waterloo did manage to narrow Burns lead slightly on 32 minutes with a penalty kick. This made the score 14-3 and there were no further points in the half.

The second half saw most of the early play in the Waterloo half and on 50 minutes Burn had their third try and it was Corey Logan who made something from nothing, when he received the ball 30 metres out there didn’t seem much on, but a powerful run saw him shrug off a number of Waterloo defenders enabling him to touch down. Leon Fifield again added the conversion. On 56 minutes the player numbers were even, well at least for 10 minutes as Alex Evans was sent to the sin bin. Waterloo were not making it easy for Burn, but at the same time while the away side spent time in the Burn 22 they didn’t manage to overly threaten the Burn line. However, Burn were not taking advantage of their extra man, that was until the last play of the game, a scrappy line out 40 metres from the try line was regathered by Burn, Corey Logan then made an initial break, Tom Burtonwood made more yards and his pass back inside enabled Marc Maher to run on to score from 15 metres out. Leon Fifield kicked the conversion to keep up his 100% record for the day, this made the final score 28-3.

It could be said that this game could have been different if Waterloo had not had a man sent off, however at the time of the red card Burn were ahead and were playing well, so a Burn win would still have been on the cards. While they never ran away with the game they were comfortable and deserved their win. And this was an important 5 points for Burn as the league is so tight, they find themselves in ninth, 3 points above the bottom 3, but they are also just 6 points from second spot. Burn will hope for another win next week, but they face an away trip to De La Salle which is never an easy game.