Hinckley travelled to Finstall Park, home of Bromsgrove RFC in this latest round of N3M league games. The visitors welcomed back Mark Deaville and Mark Lord to the starting line up, although Alex Salt was missing through illness. Jordan Goddard, Dave Weston and Steve Harvey made up the bench.

Bromsgrove kicked off and immediately utilised the strong wind in their favour to score a straightforward penalty in the first minute. They succeeded in putting initial pressure on the visitors as both Luke Coltman and Liam Warren were yellow carded and Bromsgrove added a second penalty goal after 20 minutes establishing a 6-0 lead. However, that was as good as it got for the home side as the Hinckley defence (even with two men down) snuffed out any home attacks with Tom Morris, Matt Loveday, Ben Avent and Rich Harris to the fore. Restored to a full compliment Hinckley kept the ball close and attacked Bromsgrove repeatedly around the fringes and established a platform in attack. Successive penalties kicked for the corner had their rewards as the home side were forced to take the ball over their own line after a number of catch and drive moves. From the resultant series of five metre penalty scrummages, a Bromsgrove yellow card in the front row and severe pressure from the Hinckley pack saw the referee award the visitors a Penalty Try routinely converted by Mark Lord. The narrow scoreline of 6-7 in Hinckley’s favour at half time, boosted the visitors confidence as did the prospect of playing with the elements in the second half.

Hinckley controlled the play virtually from the kick off with Lord using the wind to keep the home side pinned in their 22 metre area. Bromsgrove found it very difficult to break out of defence and were punished as Morris made the initial breakthrough for Avent to score wide on the right. Lord’s conversion was blown narrowly wide. Morris repeated the trick on the hour to touch down himself with Lord this time adding the conversion to take Hinckley out to a 6-19 lead.
With ten minutes left the home side desperately began to throw the ball around and made some ground threatening the Hinckley line. After Avent was yellow carded the home side ignored easy kickable penalty chances and moved the ball wide to score what turned out to be a consolation try in the right hand corner. A fine conversion moved the score to 13-19 and brought Bromsgrove back into losing bonus point contention.
Hinckley had other ideas and dominated the set piece consistently in their opponents half to gain a penalty after Lord had driven back a Bromsgrove forward in a fine offensive tackle. He added the penalty and Hinckley closed out the game to gain a 13-22 victory and deny the home side the losing bonus point.

Collectively a great performance from Hinckley and even with an inexplicable 3 to 1 against yellow card count, the visitors were unlucky not to gain a four try bonus point such was their overall superiority.
Just as Hinckley were in the earlier home game, Bromsgrove were a shadow of the side from that day. Hinckley, however, are on a roll and so more of the same next week to consolidate the promotion drive.

Next up are Burton at Leicester Road k.o still 2.15pm.

Well done Hinckley.