Aspatria 12

Blackburn 36

With three yellow cards and several injuries Burn could have easily come a cropper away at Aspatria in this Intermediate Cup game.

Despite this Burn were in control throughout the game and put in one of the best team performances of the season.

Burn started with all the play and showed their intent by turning down two kickable penalties instead opting for the scrum. Neither of these proved successful but with Aspatria pinned in their own half it was only a matter of time before Burn crossed the whitewash.

The first try came on 25 minutes with Sam Morgan running a beautiful line taking a deft pass from Anton Garcia to run under the posts. He then added the extras putting Burn in the lead.

The kick off saw Aspatria kicking the ball into touch, and after infringing at the resulting scrum, scrum-half Sean Hall took a quick penalty taking the ball into Aspatira's 22 before passing to Jake Maher who showed good strength to muscle his way over in the corner. The conversion was missed.

Aspatria then showed resilience working their way up the pitch when Alex 'Panda' Evans was shown Burn's first yellow card for hands in at the ruck. Aspatria's pressure saw a series of penalties awarded to the home team before they took advantage of the extra man and crossed the line to score themselves but missing the resulting conversion. Just before the half was over hooker Sam Parkinson took a nasty knock to the head which meant the end of his afternoon.

No sooner had Alex Evans returned to the pitch in the second half, Anton Garcia was the sin binned for an adjudged high tackle. Burn also suffered another injury with centre Sam Morgan getting a dead leg. Despite being a man down Burn mauled their way up the pitch where Alex Evans stood big with the ball on Aspatria's try line allowing Tony Thoma to rip the ball and power his way over the line. Sean Hall took over the kicking duties and duly slotted the extras.

Aspatria had worked their way into Burns 22 when the ball was spilt in the tackle, scooped up by Sean Hall who sped up to Aspatria's 22 before offloading to Jamie Cairnes who scored in the corner. The conversion was missed.

A third yellow card was soon shown to Nick King who was penalised for taking out the scrum half at the ruck. This appeared a harsh decision as the scrum half had the ball in his hand, but with a 2 man advantage Aspatria scored and converted.

Burn showed good strength and resilience scoring twice before the end of the game. Alex Evans got the first of these on 73 minutes before Rob Melling showed good pace to run the ball in the corner but kept going to get the ball under the sticks. This conversion was slotted by Sean Hall.

The game ended with Burn winning 36-12.

This was a great performance with good composure, teamwork and clever play throughout. Man of the Match goes to Tony Thoma who was outstanding at prop and showed good thought process in the loose setting up several mauls which Aspatria found difficult to live with.

Head Coach Dino Radice was pleased with his teams performance today and highlighted the team spirit and performance, and is confident Burn will take this momentum into next weeks home game against De La Salle.