Clevedon travelled to Cleve for the first time in their history with a coveted place in the next round of the Bristol Junior Combination Cup at stake. Having not lost yet this season we turned up brimming with confidence and high hopes of a possible upset against the favourites.

Unfortunately it wasn't to be our day and any dreams of an away victory were very quickly dashed as Cleve were rampant straight from the off, running in 3 tries within 10 minutes!!!! As good as Cleve were, we were absolutely unrecognisable as the team of late. Yes Cleve ran some beautiful ball, they were unselfish and intelligent. Their No 10 was imperious, running the show from his armchair and the outside backs were decisive and deadly. However for some reason we never offered any opposition to this, politely stepping out of the way at every opportunity! We can tackle very well, however yesterday we didn't, or at least we didn't to begin with. On the quarter hour mark Tom Wills blazed over with an opportune effort, Leaman expertly adding the extras as usual. Cleve then hit back with two further converted tries to effectively end the tie. Despite this mountain to climb, the final 5 minutes of the half eventually saw us get some phases together and a well worked passage saw Big Tommy Lee smash over out wide for his first try of the season.

It was obvious that the snoozy start had decimated any chance of progressing in this competition, and the half time scoreboard was uneasy reading at 31 - 12. At this point the easy option would have been to blame one another, completely capitulate and be on the end of a thorough pasting !!! We didn't, and took to the field with renewed ambition and determination. Despite playing much better Cleve managed to compound matters by scoring twice more in quick succession. At 41 points to 12 it looked like it was going to be an awfully long day at the office. But I have to take my hat off to the lads, their heads never went down, and as if they'd had enough of this humiliation some fighting spirit arose from somewhere within and the last 15 minutes belonged to us. Ricardo crossed first, Tom wills grabbed his second striding in from half way, and Wadey grabbed the last at the death. With Tyler smashing 2 out of the 3 conversions this saw Clevedon go 19 points unanswered to bring the score a little respectability at 41-31.

In hindsight I think we can safely say, the slow start cost us dearly and first up tackling desperately needs to improve. But on the flip side, teamwork and positivity was nothing short of astonishing. We scored 31 points against a team that is quite possibly the best around; there won’t be many teams that put 5 tries past them this year I can assure you. We should also be very pleased with the set piece; against a much bigger side we very much held our own in the scrums and easily won our fair share of lineout. The battle on the floor (which has proved to be England’s downfall) was also a surprising improvement with us very competitive and Tyler Munn notably in the middle of all things good, he must have notched at least 4 turnovers to his credit.

Well done boys, all things considered, it was a good day out. We can all learn to tackle better – that’s really no problem, confidence and experience is the key to that. However the important stuff lies a little deeper (TREDS)……….and I really think we are getting there.