Saturday’s performance from Hinckley was by no means there best, however the squad did enough to take a bonus point win away from home at Bromsgrove – an achievement not to be underestimated, against a side who themselves were unbeaten up until Saturday.

Hinckley made 3 changes from the victory over Birmingham & Solihull – two of them enforced with Richard Harris and Craig Hastie both coming in for first starts of the season replacing Callum Dacey and Josh Smith who are both on holiday, whilst Ben Avent was brought into the pack replacing the rested Tom Sanderson.

Hinckley didn’t start the game well – Bromsgrove had a chance to take the lead with a missed penalty after 4 minutes, but they did go ahead after 12 minutes with a score down the left hand side which was converted for a 7 – 0 lead.

The visitors then started to get their hands on the ball, making line breaks with most attacking sets and dominating the set piece – the first points came from a Mark Lord penalty after 16 minutes, and then 5 minutes later the excellent referee Rob Teare awarded Hinckley a penalty try, converted by Lord for a 10 – 7 lead.

The reminder of the first half was rather frustrating from a Hinckley perspective, having the majority of the ball and creating opportunities however too many errors were made, and as a result 10 – 7 was the score at the break.

Bromsgrove got the first points of the half with a penalty to make it 10 all, however Hinckley then turned the screw, scoring 17 points in quick time to all but take the game away from the home side. Joe Glover first kicked a long range penalty and then moments later cut through the defence to score next to the posts converted by Lord, and then moments later Mitch Lamb cut through from short distance with Lord again converting for a 27 – 10 lead with 20 minutes to go.

Bromsgrove got a sniff scoring a well worked try which was converted however Hinckley finished off with the bonus point score – Ben Avent coming up from a pile of bodies with the ball. Lord again converted for a final score of 34 – 17.

With the win, Hinckley finish the first month of the season top of the pile, and will hope to continue the good form at home to Syston next Saturday.