Bulls extended their winning streak to 13 games with commanding victory, writes Alex Inch.
Banbury maintained their lead at the top of the table with a 57-14 victory over Chippenham. Man of the match performances from Tom Burman and George Ding helped secure all the points.
Despite picking up another victory last weekend the Bulls were largely disappointed with their overall performance. After a big week at training though, head coach Matt Goode largely showed faith in the same squad.
Banbury got off to the perfect with two tries in the opening five minutes. Dan Brady sneaking over in the corner before Joe Mills chased down his own kick for an early lead they would never relinquish.
The Bulls dominated the first half and headed into the interval with a commanding 36-0 lead. Dan Brady scored his second of the game when he finished off a nice move from the Banbury backs. Quinten Blythe then completed a remarkable first half hat-trick of tries to all but seal the win before the half time whistle.
Chippenham came out fired up for the second half and took advantage of some poor tackling from Banbury to score two tries of their own to reduce the lead to 36-14.
Tom Burman ended any hopes of a comeback though when he scored two fantastic solo tries, his first arguably being the try of the game with a wonderful run from close to the halfway line.
Dan Brady scored right at the end of the game to complete his hat-trick to leave the scores 57-14 at the full-time whistle.
A far improved performance from the Bulls compared to last weekend. Banbury stuck to their patterns and broke the defence down very well.
There were two men of the match, George Ding and Tom Burman. Ding worked hard all game and almost certainly led the tackle count, contesting breakdowns and generally being a nuisance for the opposition all afternoon.
Tom Burman was also selected for a fantastic attacking performance. Every time he had ball in hand, he looked dangerous. He scored two tries but set up plenty more.
Goode said: “I was happy with the first half performance. Second half we dropped off a bit but overall, pretty good. To score 50 points is always a good result.
“I thought we were a lot better at the breakdown today. Got that penalty count down and made the game a lot easier for ourselves.
“It was a tough game against Buckingham last week and we identified the mistakes we made and we started to rectify that today.
“I actually thought the forwards outplayed the backs,so for the backs to score all those tries is brilliant.
“What’s the old saying - the forwards win you games and the backs decide by how much. It’s the perfect cliché today. The forwards were fantastic. It takes a team effort to play like that though.”
This week’s South West 1 (East) match is at Frome.
