Derby travelled to Burton to open their Papa John’s Men’s Community Cup campaign. They have been placed in a four team pool alongside Burton, Syston and Wirral. The team that finishes top will progress to the knockout stage.
Both league games had been close encounters, but anyone expecting something similar was in for a surprise!
Derby kicked off, playing with the wind and were almost immediately behind, when Burton scored a try after 4 minutes.
This proved to be a harbinger of the half, with Burton dominating and Derby unable to break out of their own half, or put any passages of play together.
Burton scored 4 more tries and with 2 conversions. Led at halftime 29 – 0.
The opinion among the Derby faithful was that it had been the worst half of rugby from the side for a long while.
When Burton scored another try, just after the restart, there was a concern that Burton could run up a very big score.
Credit to Derby from this point onwards as they dug deep and kept the ball better and put some phases together. In fact, from the 43rd minute, having been 34 – 0 down, they only conceded once more and that was a penalty try.
Derby started to run hard at the Burton defence and create opportunities. They didn’t make the most of all of them, but did fashion two tries.
Will Town and Ben Wilcox were prominent in setting Joe Acton away to score his 6th try of the season and Jake Barker took a tricky pass to score with the last play of the game.
A day to forget for Derby and credit to Burton who thoroughly deserved their victory.
Next week Wirral visit Haslams and Derby will need to win to have any chance of progressing to the knockout stage.
Come on Derby!
Report by: R. Bambra