Today is

Burton 81 Eccleshall 0 on Oct 7th 2006

In a hastily arranged fixture Eccleshall cancelled a previously arranged match to travel to Burton in order to give Burton ‘A’ team a home fixture, and despite taking a heavy beating they travelled home having totally enjoyed the fixture. Burton played the game at pace and spread the ball out wide at every opportunity and this resulted in a first half hat trick for young colt Tom Atherton. With the back row, ably led by Simon Spencer, securing ball at every break down Ian Jones, another Colt, was able to throw the ball out wide in every possible direction. This created havoc among the Eccleshall defence, who despite the constant pressure never made life easy for Burton with some excellent tackling. With all this ball Burton should have scored more in the first half but poor alignment and running across the pitch resulted in the wings having very little space. The Burton team kept the ball alive from these positions and created plenty of overlaps but these were not used.

The second half was much better for Burton with the forwards securing good ball and better lines of running by the backs saw Tian Ellis score a hat trick in this half. Although Burton were in total control the game was being played with tremendous spirit with both side trying to play good open rugby and even Eccleshall threw what little ball they had across the pitch in an attempt to get a score. In the end Burton’s dominance of the game was too much for the visitors and further tries by John Hamilton, Pete Burchell, Lee English, Gareth Sutton, Tristan Gill and Mark Ovens plus conversions and penalties by Sutton and Ovens resulted in Burton’s big winning score of 81-0 in a game enjoyed by all players and spectators.