With their already depleted side suffering 4 more withdraws this week due to illness and injury Avon were forced to select winger Dan Mutlow in the pack for his first ever game in the back row.

This makeshift Avon team is nothing if nor resilient and they took the game to Cheltenham early on putting the home sides much larger pack under considerable pressure at scrum time. Cheltenham were not afraid to put width on the ball and looked to attack at any opportunity. They took the lead on 20 mins when a clever midfield move sucked in the Avon defence and allowed them to get around the outside to score in the corner. The conversion was excellently converted by the Cheltenham hooker.

Avon hit back almost immediately, an off the top lineout ball was moved into midfield where Josh Hardin- Wyatt making his first team debut at centre created space for Dan Griffin who made an outside break before feeding back inside to James Leeming to score in the corner.

Cheltenham got a second try on 30min and Avon levelled it to 12-12 just before halftime when the pack marched back the Cheltenham eight to give Scrum half Alex Gapper a simple touchdown Fitch converted.

The host were now playing against the wind in the second half and were getting very little change from the Avon pack so opened up their game even more. This paid dividends as the ran in two try's in the first 15 mins of the second half. Avon however did not fold and increased the tempo themselves and with 13 Mins to go Ben Hurd took another strike against the head and Chaz Meddick powered over from 15m out to pull it back to 24 19. Avon were now dominate and went in search of the win and with 1 min of normal time left Avon were camped on the Home line and with the ref playing advantage for a penalty Fly Half Fitch put in a pinpoint Cross field kick for Dan Griffin to score the bonus point try in the corner and make it all square. Fitch then nailed the conversion from the touchline giving Avon a 2 point lead going into injury time.

All there was to do now was to close the game out but as Avon tried to create a position to exit the 22 from the kick off they knocked on and although they drove Cheltenham back at the resulting scrum it wheeled and opened up a gap for the home number 8 to crash over and steal the win.

So Avon for the second time in recent weeks had to settle for losing and 4 try bonus points.

Next week the face unbeaten Keynsham at Hicksfield and will be hoping to welcome back some of the player off the injury list to what is always a hard encounter