Goode reflects on the tight margins in Bulls' defeat

Bulls lost 15-10 against second-placed Royal Wootton Bassett in Saturday's Wadworth 6X South West One East fixture.

It was a game Bulls had to win against the side one place and seven points above them in the table.

The conditions meant the game had to be switched from the main pitch to one of the other pitches at the DCS Stadium but Goode did not use that as an excuse.

Bulls struggled to retain possession early on as the visitors made all the running. Some tremendous defence kept the visitors at bay before Troy Cussack kicked a penalty. Bulls struggled to get out of their half but, after Cussack missed another penalty attempt, the hosts finally got going.

A deep kick ended with the ball being switched along the line and Tommy Gray went over in the corner leaving Alex Caviezel Cox to nail a tricky conversion.

After the restart Dan Hales scored a try for the visitors and Cussack added the extras to edge his side in front. But shortly after missing an earlier attempt, Ed Phillips kicked a superb penalty from out wide to give Bulls a two-point advantage.

But it was not to be with Chris Patterson scoring in the corner following a line-out after Bulls had been caught out upfield.

Goode said: "I don't think the switch of pitch made any difference, it was the first 25 minutes of the game that did. We needed to do a lot more with the elements in our favour in the first half.

"No excuses, we didn't play through the four phases and kept giving the ball away. Our defence was superb but we didn't do enough with the ball, Wootton Bassett looked after the ball better than we did.

"We looked amateurish at times, we should have kicked for touch more in the opening period. We scored on our first venture into their 22 but then had another great chance just before halftime when we gave the ball away again.

"Games come down to fine margins. The deciding try came from giving the ball away again in their half from a turnover, we gave away another penalty and they put it right into our corner and got the score."