Hornets Under-15s were well beaten in the final of the Bristol Combination Cup.

HORNETS Under-15s went into the Bristol Combination Cup final against Bath on the back of some outstanding performances, but were well beaten 52-19.

Hornets struggled with Bath’s ability to play percentage rugby, using their huge pack and lively backs to execute quality rugby, scoring five unanswered tries in the first-half.

After the break, Hornets started to impose themselves on the opposition. When a ball was spilled by Bath, the ball was kicked through and Francis beat the full-back to record Hornets’ first score, converted by Humphris.

Now with extra confidence, and Richardson and Holyday were making ground, with Solomon keeping the forwards going with searching runs.

An infringement allowed a tap penalty and Holyday was stopped just short, surging efforts by Mohide and Eades were cancelled out by Bath, but they were unable to stop Cocking who touched down under the posts, converted by Humphris.

Bath came back to get a couple of tries before Williams surged onto the ball on halfway and found himself in the middle of a maul.

With his forwards linking together and pushing the Bath pack backwards, Williams and his forwards pushed Bath to the try line and Foroughi spotted a gap to go over for a fantastic 15-man try.

Bath once again finished with a score to make it 52-19.

Squad: J Entwistle, T Cocking, L Fitzpatrick, J Mohide, B Eades, J Richardson, A Francis, P Holyday, B Solomon, J Humphris, B Turner, S Coe, A Foroughi, C Chamberlain, H Taylor, F Dolcezza, B Williams, J Parkman, C Tanner, J Constable, J Higgins.

The Under-8s made the journey across Bristol to visit Cleve and it was end-to-end play at the Hayfields in games against the host club and Southmead.

With Hornets and Cleve providing enough players for four teams, the first round of games got under way and attacking rugby was the call of the day.

For the second round of games, Southmead arrived and one game against them was played, with a third game against Cleve. The attacking rugby continued and supplemented with great support play, particularly in the Southmead game.

Now at the halfway point of the season and while the results are generally secondary to actually playing, there has not been an occasion where the coaches have felt the squad have been out of their depth.

In their last game before the Christmas break, the Under-12s travelled to Cleve and were affected by several unavailable players.

The first game proved one-sided as Cleve ran in five tries and Hornets got nowhere near the Cleve try line. The score would have been higher had try saving tackles not been made by Reeve, Lawrence and George.

The second game was much closer as the players combined better as a team. It was deadlocked at half-time and Hornets got close to the Cleve try line thanks to a strong run by captain for the day Harry.

A further breakaway move from Sol and George was again thwarted by the Cleve defence, but the home side won the game with two tries.

WESTON Under-14s made the short journey to Hornets and came away with a well-deserved 52-0 victory.

Weston’s superb pack soon began to get on top of the larger home eight, with props George Bamsey and Jack Howard making big inroads, supported by the excellent Josh Gardner and Cosmin Bilciurescu.

The scoring was opened by Jake Middleton with two quick tries, both converted by Bamsey. Weston’s offloading out of contact was causing mayhem with the Hornets, defence and a fantastic passage of play was finished off by Howard, closely followed by a fourth try touched down by Bamsey for a half-time score of 26-0 to Weston.

To their credit, Hornets did not let their heads drop and continued to compete well in the second half, but they met some ferocious defence from the Weston lads.

Weston added four more second half tries through Eddie Davies (2), Middleton and Tom Hughes. Bamsey added six conversions for a personal tally of 17 points.