On the last game of 2012 burnham travelled to north bristol with a very depleted squad of 16 players, not the ideal scenario to play a team that were riding high in the league and having lost only 2 league games this season (1 of these was against us) a tough task was in front of the boys in blue.

Burnham started brightly and found themselves in norths territory and soon took the lead from a penalty by tim piper. But it was soon norths turn to get into burnhams territory and get themselves level through their winger who slotted over a penalty from 30 metres 3-3, with penalties starting to rack up it was only a matter of time until the inevitable happened and bryan webb was sin binned for an infringement at a maul. From the resulting penalty north kicked to the corner and from the lineout they drove burnham back to score a well controlled maul and within a couple of minutes they had score their 2nd when the oppositions number 10 eased his way through some in effective tackling to take the score to 15-3. half time

Burnham were forced into a change at half time with hard working captain russ pike going off with matt bonel coming on, but they soon found themselves 2 more scores behind when poor handling and decision making ended up in burnham conceding 2 more tries to take the score to 25-3. Now you would be thinking that north would of run riot and started to score at will but it took all of 55 minutes for burnham to realise their strengths which was the dominant forward pack so from every opportunity burnham took scrums and lineouts and drove back into norths half where from a 5 metre scrum sored a pushover try with stu blake touching down 25-8.
Then from a series of penalties again burnham found themselves in norths 22 with a lineout and a simple catch and drive saw sam (date night) coles flop over to build the score upto 25-13. The come back was soon ended when a mistake at the back let north through to take their total to 30-13.
Burnham were to have the final say of the game with yet more forward dominance and were awarded a penalty try to finish the scoreline off at 30-20.

So the final game of what has been a very up and down 2012 ended in yet another loss for burnham, too many games have been lost through ill discipline and soft tackling this season instead of sitting high in the league they now sit just 8 points off relegation. Its the players that will turn it around as they are a tight unit and know that its them that have themselves into this and only them that can get themselves out.

A big thank you and pat on the back for russ pike and matt slater for consistently getting players out playing no matter how many and with strict selection policy now players will have to work hard to get into either side specially with some of the talented young colts coming through competition will fierce.

Whos up for the battle in 2013?????