Director of Rugby, Clive Book reports.........Avon had started brightly and their set piece was dominant throughout the game despite losing prop Chris Mutlow after only 5 minutes, being replaced by Ian Burnell who put in a man-of-the-match performance. The visitors looked far the most likely to open the scoring before Minehead winger Kyle Lewis intercepted and sprinted in from 40 metres to give the home side the lead. Avon responded with a Johnny Batchelor penalty but soon found themselves further behind when a loose ball was hacked through for James Day to win the race to the touchdown on the opposite wing.

Minehead’s defence was strong all afternoon as they withheld assault after assault as Avon battered their goal line. Although there may have been an element of luck about Minehead’s first two tries, the same could not be said about their third which followed a multi-phased attack and was finished off by Jacob Gower who cut an excellent line back down the slope to score under the posts. Fly half Joel Lynch converted all three tries to set up a healthy 21-3 lead.

Avon’s misfortunes did not improve as they lost scrum half Kiddie Skeikh to injury just before half time as he was held up just short of the try line following a searing break down the blindside.

Although faced with a daunting deficit, Avon had enjoyed plenty of possession and control and just needed a change of tactics to break the stubborn Minehead defence. To overcome this, coach Kai Harwood made a few subtle changes and immediately got the result he wanted. Having stretched the home team’s defence up the slope, Avon switched play for the pacy Batchelor to get outside of the defence for a well worked try. He then added the extras.

The visitors continued to take the game to Minehead and were rewarded again 15 minutes later when a sustained attack saw skipper Kane Book float a lovely pass to Batchelor who sprinted away to score in the top corner to take his tally for the day to 15 points. Avon dominated possession in the last quarter of the game but were thwarted time and time again as Zak Harwood, Tom Boreham and Xander Davis all made big inroads into the defensive wall but could not totally get though a battling Minehead defence as the clock ticked down.

For the last few minutes of the game, Avon were camped on the Minehead line, giving the large home crowd some very anxious moments, but in the end Avon could not get over for the winning try and had to settle for the bonus point.