BURNHAM FAIL TO LEARN THEIR LESSONS

Three defeats in a row and the same old strory with burnham failing to learn their previous weeks lessons in discipline at breakdown and attacking quality.

The long trip to berry hill was long anticipated as this would be luke gowans last game for the club before he heads off on his search for the great wall of china in the land down under australia. The club, players and all supporters of burnham on sea would like to thank him for all his efforts and loyalty to the club over the last 8 or 9 years and wish him the very best in his new adventure.
With a few changes to the team due to injuries and suspension burnham travelled with a full side and were confident in finding the right result.

Burnham started the game strongly putting the home side on the back foot with some strong phase play and were rewarded with a penalty which piper converted to take the score to 0-3.
Berry got themselves back into the game with a simple basic plan of strong runners with support players and aggression at the break down which burnham struggled to deal with and only some strong body on the line defence from bryan webb and luke gowan prevented berry from scoring but due to the high number of penalties stu blake had to pay the price for the team as he was sin binned for an infringment at the break down. This enabled berry to level the scores to 3-3.
Strong defence but poor discipline at breakdowns was the story of the first half with the score at half time 6-3 to berry.

The second half came and with burnham playing down the slope and having withstood the onslaught of berry hill in the first half burnham knew they now had their chance to take the game by the scruff of the neck, gain control and win the game but the story of the second half was a tale of missed opportunities, unable to create attacking chances and still poor discipline at the break down.
Berry rode their luck and were very fortunate with SOME decisions but ultimately it was undone by burnhams ability to take control and turn all the possession and territory into points.
With berry finally getting into burnhams half and scoring a try in the corner to take the score to 14-3.

Some bitter pills to swallow but the lessons must be learnt, at times burnhams defence specially in this and last weeks game was truly outstanding specially from gowan, webb, hocking, muskett and others but its the trust in the defence at the break down thats the issue along with the right attacking decisions with passes not going to hand and players making line breaks and either not having support to offload to or making the wrong decisions with the ball.
The quality is in the side there is no doubt about that but the players need to realise this and also that the ref is THE REF and he makes the decision even if they are at times very questionable.

So with a fond farewell and g’day to luke he was duly awarded the man of the match for another outstanding display and will be hard to replace.

Saturday burnham are at home to bristol harlequins and WILL give the performance our faithful supporters derserve.
kick off 3pm