Boars Bark-ing mad as chance is wasted

With home advantage, the Boars should have come away with a comfortable victory and given themselves a two point cushion over relegation rivals Whitchurch.

From the start they looked the better side.

With the established front row of Steve Blackburn, Arnold and Kevin Salisbury, Bromsgrove took on the visitors up-front and opened the scoring with a well-worked move.

After several stages of play, the ruck ball was fed to fly-half Duncan Roke who showed the ball and then slipped through the gap to score a try.

Roke then converted and Bromsgrove led 7-0.

While Bromsgrove were on top they managed to squander numerous opportunities to score.

On several occasions players decided to hang on to the ball rather than pass to a supporting player.

There was an element of everyone wanting to score rather than collectively working through stages of play to create opportunities.

Roke managed to slot a further penalty before half-time to take his and Bromsgrove's points tally to 10 but really they should have been out of sight by the half-time whistle.

Barkers Butts started the second-half with a determination and fight that was not present in the first-half.

After defensive mistakes from the Boars, the visitors scored a couple of tries that were unconverted.

Bromsgrove were visibly deflated and continued to tackle poorly.

They displayed a general lack of tactical awareness and, where their half-backs needed to exert control, there was none.

Despite an excellent performance from openside Nigel Burrows the pack struggled to exert dominance and it was Barkers who scored next.

The try came from another defensive error and this time Barkers managed to convert to take a 17-10 lead.

The score put Bromsgrove in an uncompromising position but with only a few minutes to go Barkers made a couple of mistakes that allowed the Boars to maintain a position in side their 22.

Bromsgrove attacked and forced Barkers to give away a penalty five-yards out.

The Boars did not even have time to kick to touch for the lineout and instead had to run the ball.

Up stepped Arnold who took the ball and heroically crashed through Barkers defence to score.

The try left Bromsgrove needing a far from easy conversion to tie the scores.

Roke slotted the ball cleanly through the uprights and Bromsgrove snatched a draw from the jaws of defeat.

However, they have only themselves to blame for not wrapping the game up in the first-half.

Coach Ross Baxter admitted his side missed a golden chance in their bid for league survival.

"It was an opportunity missed," he said.

"We understood the importance of the game in terms of giving us that cushion.

"Our performance was 90 per cent good in the first-half.

"But our final execution was poor.

"We were over-impetuous in thinking the win will come.

"It should have been a comfortable win.

"What was positive was that from a position where it looked like we would get nothing, we got something from the embers."

Bromsgrove turn their attention to the North Midlands Cup on Saturday when they host Midlands Division Two (West) leaders Malvern.