Bournville Forwards Coach CJ Osazuwa admitted that his side were beaten by the slightly better side after their nine-match unbeaten run in Regional One Midlands came to an end with a 39-38 defeat in a pulsating contest at Newent.
Bourns looked down and out when Newent went 39-12 up four minutes into the second-half but they staged a magnificent fightback which secured two precious bonus points on their first-ever visit to The Rec.
It would have been all five points had Jacob Fewtrell landed a last-gasp penalty and there were huge sighs of relief from the Newent supporters when the kick went wide as they preserved an unbeaten home record that stretches back more than two years.
“Honestly I don’t think we deserved five points,” Osazuwa admitted. “If you look at the last 30 minutes it looked amazing. That’s what we have done all season – we have finished hard and we have finished fast.
“But I would say the slightly better team won on the day. Newent don’t lose here for a reason. They weren’t the most challenging conditions today, the pitch held up well, but they know how to use the slope, they have a really vociferous crowd and they get right behind them.
“I wouldn’t say that was our poorest performance we have had – I always go back to Bridgnorth – but that was a sloppy first-half. We definitely were up for it but we were a bit sloppy.
“We leave with two points which Phil Maynard, Alex Grove and myself we would happily take and we go again. We are back down in Gloucestershire again next week at Drybrook so we have an opportunity to leave with five points.”
Although Bournville led twice in the first 30 minutes things unravelled in a 12 minute period either side of half-time when Newent rattled in four tries to build an imposing lead.
“Most of our decision making in that game was right, it was just the execution was a bit sloppy,” Osazuwa said. “Missed tackles, which is really unlike us. We missed one-on-one tackles and they got momentum. We defended quite narrowly and we pride ourselves on filling the field quite well. A couple of times we got stripped out wide and when you are scrambling out wide against a side like Newent who know exactly what to do you are going to be on the back foot. But we could have won on another day.”
Despite the disappointment of defeat Osazuwa was proud of the way his players fought back and almost made five successive away wins.
“If you give yourself that much of a task – we were 39-12 down – to come back from to get to within a point it is something to be proud of. We did some really good things and if we can do another ten or 20 minutes of the good things next week then we will be back to the team we know we can be,” he said.
“We don’t roll over. At 39-12 we could have just gone: you know what, it’s not for us today but we never looked like we were going to roll over.”
Bourns also had to absorb the loss of Adam Shaw with a dislocated shoulder midway through the second-half, an injury that could mean a lengthy spell on the sidelines for an influential player.
“We have not got a huge squad so anyone missing is a big thing. The thing with Shawsy is that he does a lot of things really well but what he does do especially well is to stop momentum with the other team,” Osazuwa said.
