Maybe it was not being able to play a game for 6 weeks. Perhaps it was the aftermath of President Tony Mutlow’s wake the day before. Or even due to missing a few influential players. Whilst these factors may have played a small part, in reality, the fact remains that Burnham played some outstanding attacking rugby to fully deserve their win and showed why they are top of the Counties 2 Somerset table.

The first 15 minutes were fairly even as Burnham took the lead with two tries whilst Avon responded with a try of their own from Ben May and a penalty from Rob Fitch. Then Burnham unleashed an avalanche of points with some mesmerising running and support play, albeit assisted by some poor one-on-one Avon tackling. With another 4 tries all being scored under the posts, the visitors enjoyed a 40 – 8 lead at half time.

When Burnham followed this up with another 4 exhilarating tries from their dangerous back line, Avon were left staring down the barrel of a potentially huge defeat as their visitors opened up a 66 – 8 lead with 25 minutes left to play. To their credit, the black and ambers showed great character to tighten up their defence to prevent Burnham from scoring again.

In addition, with Will Hayward leading the way up front and Fitch and Patrick Ridley posing threats in midfield, Avon started to win more possession and to put together some attacking bursts themselves. Despite losing prop forward Liam Ridley with a dislocated shoulder, Avon suddenly scored 19 unanswered points themselves. The irrepressible Ben Hurd touched down two tries from powerful drives after Rhys van den Handel secured good line out possession.

This left Avon chasing a previously unlikely bonus point for their 4th try and they achieved their target in the final minutes as Ollie Flight sniped up the blindside for the vital score. Fitch added another 2 conversions to complete the scoring in the match well-refereed by Shaun Redmond.

The Avon 2nds “elite” played a warm-up game beforehand but succumbed to a 24 – 5 defeat against the Bath University Jaegers.