Brilliant Newport send out a message to title rivals

Bromsgrove arrived at the Old Showground sitting top of the table and on the back of putting 85 points on the board in their previous outing against Dudley Kingswinford.

But they headed home pointless on this occasion as their hosts put in the complete performance, combing silky handling and offloads with aggressive defence.

Director of rugby Bob Adams had stressed the need for his side to improve defensively in the build up to the game and all the hard work on the training ground paid off as his side secured a superb 31-0 success.

“Our focus during training had been on our defence and without question we took that into our game against Bromsgrove,” said a delighted Adams.

“There’s no doubt that this was our best performance so far this season, our platform was built around our defence.

“We talked during the week of how we were going to execute our defensive strategy and see how Bromsgrove would react with the intensity and pressure we were going to apply upon them.

“The pleasing aspect from Saturday was that the other facets of our game remained good, set-piece and attack, but the most pleasing part as a group was to nil our opposition.”

“In our huddle we talked of how we learn from this performance and work to better ourselves again ready for our next game away to Burton.

“Our energy and intensity should also be there week in week out, this will help drive our standards and performances and hopefully move us closer to the levels we are searching for as a group.”

Port’s pack looked strong from the start and a pushover try by Jack Wells in the 12th minute set the tone.

That score was followed by another from the restart as Ricky Bailey’s break took him into the Bromsgrove 22. From the resultant breakdown, Newport established an overload on the left-hand side and it was a simple case of going through the hands to put in Sam Evans in the corner.

Newport continued to ramp up the pressure which resulted in Sam Brown dotting down under the posts to make it 19-0 at half-time, with Jake Leonard also having landed two conversions.

Bromsgrove applied some pressure in the the second half but it was Newport added more points in the final 10 minutes.

A lineout saw the ball worked out to Jake Leonard at inside centre and he capped a magnificent afternoon with an outrageous show and go that completely fooled the defence and saw him dot down under the posts, with Leonard adding the extras.

A superb afternoon’s work was completed by a pushover try from Ollie Buckley.

The victory left Newport in joint-second place in the league with Scunthorpe, a point behind leaders Sheffield.

Bridgnorth are sitting fifth in standings after recording a fifth league win in seven outings.

North ran in four tries on their way to a comfortable 26-12 success on the road at Oundle.

The visitors’ opening try came from Gregg Szczepanski, with Elliott Murphy adding the conversion.

Murphy then extended the lead with a try and conversion.

A scrum close to the Oundle line resulted in Connor Nicholls putting Luis Evitt in for a try, Murphy again converting.

A powerful run from Szczepanski than gave Finn the chance to touchdown in the corner for the bonus point try.

To their credit, Oundle finished the game strongly scoring an unconverted try before being awarded a penalty try.

A late withdrawal meant North travelled to Oundle with just 17 players, Director of Rugby Dan Griffiths joining the bench just before the kick off.

With the very first play of the game Oundle lost their blind side flanker with an arm injury causing a reshuffle with their centre moving to the back row.