Hornets lost their derby encounter at Burnham to the last kick of the match.

HORNETS’ unbeaten run of seven games came to an end in a disappointing match away to Burnham, losing to a penalty in the final play of the match.

With several of this season’s key players unavailable through injury and other commitments, including Kirk Middlemiss, Matt Cornish, Sean Disney and Harry Nash, it was always going to be a tough match.

In the early exchanges Burnham seemed to have the upper hand in the scrum, with Hornets looking sharper in the backs.

The home side saw their first penalty attempt go wide of the target after 15 minutes. Ten minutes later, the first score came from man of the match Jermaine Jones, who caught a clearance kick on his own 10 metre line and ran through several defenders to touch down for the first of his three tries.

The visitors extended the lead, again as a result of the dancing toes of Jones as he took a pass on the 22 and beat three defenders to run in under the posts for his second try. Lloyd-Jones added the extras.

Not be outdone, Burnham fought back and six minutes into first half injury time crossed the whitewash to give an interval score of 5-12 in Hornets’ favour.

Burnham started the second half as they ended the first and were back on the attack from the outset. The pressure they mounted on the visitors defence eventually led to their fly-half crossing the line to reduce the deficit.

Making a couple of changes at this point, Chris Francis replaced Luke Grimes and Jamie Biddle came on for Jack Simmons, Hornets started to claw their way back into the game.

However, on one foray into the hosts 22, an unfortunate clash of heads in a ruck led to the lengthy delay that saw a Burnham player leave the field in an ambulance.

Hornets struck again to relieve some of the pressure, as Jones completed his hat-trick entering the line at pace to coast through a gap between the centres.

Five minutes later, a glaring mistake in the Hornets defensive line was pounced on by a Burnham prop as he snuck in for a score around the side of the ruck. The scores were levelled at 17-17 with the conversion.

With time running out, Burnham intercepted a pass on their own five metre line and ran up to the Hornets 22. No 8 Matt Parker was penalised following a bust up at the scrum and subsequently yellow carded. The penalty was kicked from close range with the final play of the game for Burnham to record victory.

Hornets will now hope to have some of the absentees back for the home clash against Cirencester on Saturday, which is the last of the 3pm kick-offs this year, and get back to winning ways to protect their unbeaten run at the Nest.

Yatton 3rd 17 pts

Hornets 3rd XV 58 pts

Hornets thirds made the short trip to Yatton looking to emulate their 1st XV’s victory four weeks previously.

Although the first 10 minutes passed scoreless, Hornets worked their way into the Yatton 22 and from a line-out, skipper Dave Jones was driven over to score Hornets’ first try.

Yatton replied with a penalty before Hornets extended their lead with two unconverted tries from man of the match James Gould in quick succession. Just before the break, full-back Simon Owens chipped ahead for Connor Hull to score. Jason Connolly added the conversion to leave the half-time score 22-3 to Hornets.

After the break, Hornets scored straight from the kick-off as Connolly dived over in the corner. Good inter-play between the backs and the forwards saw Hull score his second try and Hornets’ third try of the half came when Sean Steadman broke from halfway and Rob Owen was on hand to take the scoring pass, with Connolly adding the extras.

Yatton replied a well-deserved converted try. Hornets responded with three further tries for Gould (3), two converted by Connolly. Yatton had the last word with a converted try as Hornets ran out 58-17 winners.