South West 1 West

Cleve 13, Bridgwater & Albion 0

BRIDGWATER & Albion suffered a sixth defeat of the season at the hands of league leaders Cleve on Saturday, writes Tony Pomeroy.

The defeat sees Albion slip nine points behind second-place Ivybridge, who currently have a firm grip on the play-off spot.

The home team very much had the best of the first half dominating possession and territory.

A large proportion of this can however be put down to Bridgwater's ill discipline, particularly at the ruck where they were penalised on several occasions for holding on.

The penalty count for the half stood at 9-2 in favour of the home side.

Most of these were within kicking distance, however Cleve only elected to go for goal twice, both times bisecting the posts.

Despite some valiant attempts at getting over the line, continued Cleve handling errors and great Bridgwater defence ensured no further points troubled the score board this half and at the break the score was 6-0 to Cleve.

The game was still there for the taking throughout the second half, where Bridgwater now had the advantage of the slight breeze.

Bridgwater possibly had the upper hand for much of the half – and a great steal at a ruck in the centre of the field from Spellissy gave Bridgwater a great opportunity - however a knock-on 15 metre from the line ended that challenge.

Cleve came very close to scoring when they stole the ball from a Bridgwater line out 10 metres from their line and a drive ensued.

The grounding of the ball was however disallowed when the Cleve player crashed into one of his team mates, resulting in accidental off side.

Eight minutes from time, Bridgwater's Chris Ashwin took what should have been a standard tackle – bit instead suffered a reoccurrence of his dislocated shoulder that he received in the Thornbury game just before Christmas.

Drabble came back on and went to the wing, bringing Rob Allen into the centre to replace Ashwin.

At the restart, Cleve came out with the ball and immediately Alex Kilbane broke through the defence to score under the posts.

The resultant kick was good bringing the score to 13-0.

Bridgwater did not however give up and came back determined not to leave Cleve without at least getting on the scoreboard.

A break from Nick Francis down the wing saw an offload to Spellissy, who in turn offloaded the Allen.

As Allen was tackled 10 metres out, he offloaded wide to James Martin who was part of a two man overlap - however the ball was passed just forward and following the resultant scrum Cleve cleared the ball.

Albion have a week off next week, but in two weeks’ time they host Clevedon at College Way.