Burnham took the short trip down the M5 to come away with another disappointing result.Thus far they have not managed a single away win and now find themselves back in the middle of the dogfight for demotion.

After 5 minutes Burnham were penalised for pulling down a maul.3-0.Burnham were unlucky in the fact that every single bounce of the ball went Cullompton’s way,taking away the iniative from Burnham,allowing Cullompton’s marauding forwards,in particular their number 8,who broke through to charge for the line,tackled 2 metres out,but managed to stretch to score.8-0.

Shortly afterwards Cullompton extended their lead when Burnham were caught coming in from the side.11-0.

5 minutes later Burnham’s clearing kick was caught by the fullback and with a combination of speedy passing and poor tackling by Burnham,allowing the scrum half to collect the ball 10 metres out and cut through to the posts.18-0.

On the stroke of halftime,again with tackles being missed,Cullompton crashed over under the posts.25-0.

Within a few minutes of restarting,Burnham were unlucky when Ross McKechan was taken off with a debilitating leg injury,diagnosed as a very bad strain.Burnham seemed to lift their effort and after winning their scrum,scrummaging on the whole was quite good, Lewis whipped the ball to Piper,who created a miss move to Paul,who sped down the left wing before timing his pass to Pettitt,who almost reached the line but was able to offload to Tim Piper to make the score and then convert.25-7.

Unfortunately,Burnham retreated inti their shell and Cullompton,on the stroke of time were able to score again and collect a try bonus point.Final score 30-7.

Parts of Burnham’s game evenly matched their opponents but let themselves down with lack of discipline and poor tacling.Lineouts were good,scrummaging adequate and pace,when they got it out wide showed that they had a potent weapon.

Burnham now must try and garnish at least 12 points from their final games.

No match next weekend,however the clubhouse will be open for Super Saturday Six Nations.

Written by John Piper