Like many before, this local derby was always going to be seriously contested by both sides, but especially by the visitors Syston who would, among other things, be looking to negate the power of the Hinckley pack. As it turned out the away side were a nuisance throughout and gave a dogged performance right to the final whistle.
Hinckley welcomed back Luke Coltman, Alex Norris and Dylan Weddle to the match day squad.

Hinckley kicked off on a dull afternoon and were immediately on the receiving end of the visitors pressure. For the first twenty minutes Syston forced Hinckley into a sub standard performance where the home side couldn’t dominate and were forced to take second best in most areas.
However, the Hinckley pack suddenly woke up and rolled a maul a full 20 metres for Tom Morris to touch down with Syston in disarray. Mark Lord couldn’t add the extras.
Minutes later Sam Greasley added Hinckley’s second try with a strong forceful run through the visitors defence wide on the left taking several defenders over the line with him. Lord added a fine conversion to move the hosts out to a 12-0 lead and at last Hinckley were putting together some positive rugby.
Syston immediately hit back with a penalty from outside half James Morgan, but Hinckley moved up a gear for captain Alex Salt backing himself to run in from 20 metres after another rolling maul shredded the visitors defence. Lord added another fine conversion, this time from wide out on the right, taking the score onto 19-3 at half time.

Hinckley started the second half slowly and Syston took full advantage as Morgan added a penalty and converted Adam Davey’s try as the gap was narrowed to 19-13 and the visitors tails were up. Joe Glover sniped around the base of a collapsed rolling maul to add Hinckley’s bonus point gaining fourth try with Lord again adding the conversion to further the home side’s lead to 26-13.
A yellow card for Ben Avent resulted in Morgan missing a penalty for Syston, but he was on hand to convert Ian Smith’s 67th minute try as the visitors ran back a poor Hinckley defensive clearance kick. Syston trailed 26-20 and were looking for at least a losing bonus point, but their discipline let them down and Lord converted two out of three late penalties to enable Hinckley to run out 32-20 winners and remain top of the league by points difference from Old Hales.

Sometimes you have to win ugly and this was a prime example as Hinckley were not firing on all cylinders and only showed glimpses of their undoubted capabilities during the game.

Next week another home game as Lichfield visit Leicester Road 3pm kick off. Be there to exorcise the ghost of England’s exit from the World Cup - Oh dear!