Burnham progressed to the next round of the cup with a hard fought victory over bath university at the pit.
Burnham’s coaches were eager to use this game to try out new combinations and give reward to the fringe players that make training week in week out and put great effort in putting pressure on the 1st team players. It has to be said that the players that stepped into the line up did not look out of place and will give the coaching team selection headaches for the forth coming games.

Burnham’s forwards once again lived up to their strong set piece tag by constantly disrupting baths scrum and doing their best to disrupt baths strong rolling maul with this it meant that baths skilful backline were unable to get settled ball, it was from a bath scrum in Burnham’s half that the stags got their first score through centre Tim piper, who picked out a looping pass from the bath fly half and intercepted to almost make it to the line only to be cut short from their quick winger who only just managed to catch him. From the breakdown bath were caught offside and piper slotted over the penalty.
Burnham’s first try came from almost a carbon copy of their first score but this time piper made it to the try line from a 50 metre intercept this took the score to 10-0.

With Burnham though nothing is ever simple and through silly mistakes of trying to run it out of their own 22 or not clearing the lines and releasing pressure they let bath back into the game with a penalty of their own to put them on the score board at 10-3.
Burnham went straight back down into baths half and with strong carry’s by the front row triplets, henry and ross kekkers the stags asserted their pressure and got another penalty which piper slotted over to make it 13-3.
Too many times this season Burnham when scoring lose concentration and allow the opposition to get back into the game with stupid mistakes, silly rugby and above all very loose tackling and from all these errors baths big prop was able to run in from 30 metres and made it look easy to carve through the would be tacklers. 13-10.

With captain Russ pikes strong words under the posts Burnham forced their way down into baths half through a great bit of skill from the captain himself who collected a catch on halfway he then immediately attacked the on rushing defence and with a delicate chip over the top he collected his kick and took his team down into the oppositions 5 metre line and from the resulting scrum Burnham’s powerful pack stormed over for ross to collect the easiest of tries. 18-10
Before the halftime whistle bath managed again to score in the corner to take the score to 18-17

The second half struggled to get firing as much as the first with both sides making changes and the game opening up which created a lot of mistakes from both sides. When Burnham managed to put some phases together they were able to show the brand of rugby they have been producing at the start of the season which led to a scrum on baths line where the powerful forward pack put the pressure on and were rewarded with a penalty try. 25-17.
Bath hit back to score from a driving maul when Burnham were down to 14 men for 10 minutes. 25-24. Although bath missed a late penalty chance Burnham were able to see out the game with relative ease and progress through to the quarter finals.

The post match analysis was based on the fact that this was a CLUB result not a team as a mixture of both 1st and 2nds contributed to this victory.
With only 4 games left of the calendar year for both teams the emphasis is now to build on this performance as a club and take the attitudes and passion that was showed into firstly training on TUESDAY AND THURSDAY then into the games and finish the year strongly.

Man of the match was Ross Mckechan