Burton 'B' 60 Lichfield 3rds 10 on 19th April 2008

The Burton ‘B’ XV took their tally of wins to 18 for the season with a performance of power, pace and quality that tore the Lichfield opposition to shreds in the enormous 60-10 victory.

As befits the spirit and mentality of this team Burton played a simple game that saw John Collett and Pat Winter dominating the lineouts, Steve Bates, Ian Gibson and Martin ‘Sheep’ Bird resembling Buddist’s Gods as they destroyed the Lichfield front row and Mark Topliss in his usual seek and destroy role smashing any attempted opposition moves at source.  All simple souls but gelled together by team spirit to produce a robotic and formidable machine that recycled ball at will to allow their threequarters to have yet another leisurely Saturday afternoon stroll and how the backs revelled in it. 

With all this ball the backs ran in try after try with such regularity that the referee had to blow up 15 minutes early having run out of pages in his notebook. Tries by Ben Stone (3), Chris Lycett (2) and Dave ward (3), who all had excellent games, sealed this Burton win but not before a magical try by front row rock Martin ‘Sheep’ Bird. John Collett snatched a lineout in the Burton 22 to set up the move and on reaching the earth he fed the peeling Bird who raced round the front of the line to drive up the touchline. Like a reborn Shane Williams, he broke tackle after tackle with his searing pace, strength and trickery as he raced the length of the field before touching down under the posts for a try that must rank as the best of the season.

With skipper Pat ‘Wilko’ Winter getting five conversion and a penalty to boost Burton’s score to sixty points on this satisfying and memorable day. Special thanks should go to former Burton skipper Gavin Dadley who manfully volunteered to play for the opposition and so become part of the routed team.