South West Division One

Cinderford 3, Berry Hill 8

BERRY HILL'S ecstatic supporters were laughing their socks off on Saturday night, turning jugs of cider to vintage wine having seen off Cinderford on their own Dockham Road cabbage patch.

But spare a thought for Dennis Hargreaves, the Cinderford team manager. He had to watch the game all over again on Monday – not once but three times!

Hargreaves's semi-professional outfit have a video session on Monday nights and he has the task of preparing an edited tape to show the good and bad side of his team's performance.

"It's going to be a job to pick out many good points," he admitted.

"It was a very poor performance on our part. We were outplayed and out-thought at the line-outs and had very little good possession to run at them. I kept thinking we would come good but we never did and Berry Hill thoroughly deserved to win.

"We seemed at a loss to change our game plan or change what we were trying to do. Berry Hill's Paul Hunt had a good game and was named man-of-the-match but I thought Lee Osborne did for us. He kicked beautifully to keep the ball behind us and made sure we could never get going," he said.

Any good points?

"The only thing that went our way were the other league results. It means we are still top with a two points advantage but I don't think we have any options now other than to win every game for the rest of the season. Our management here is very upset and disappointed," he said.

In contrast Lee Osborne was singing the praises of his Berry Hill warriors.

"Adey Powles and me identified a couple of areas we thought we could exploit. We worked out a game plan and stuck to it and it came off. Everyone played very well and we were very pleased," he said.

It was important for Hill to make a good start, he said.

"We never wanted to be chasing the game. We wanted the wind in the first half and we collected a couple of scores which was perfect. And we were never under real pressure after that. It went really well," he said.

Osborne was full of praise for Hunt who played at scrum-half for the first time in six seasons.

"He did really well. I wanted him to play there from the start of the season and after his performance on Saturday I think he will realise why," said Osborne.

Osborne said all the pack had played well but he praised Tony Bean and Luke Hunter who were returning for injuries.

"Luke played with a couple of cracked ribs. He is off to Australia in a couple of weeks and was determined to play. He's a quality player and we are going to miss him," he said.

Berry Hill's driving maul was a feature of their play and Ben Lewis showed why when he was driven over for the only try of the match. Osborne added a penalty to complete his team's scoring before half time.

The lone Cinderford response was a penalty from Matt Sherratt.