Bournville Head Coach Alex Grove was bursting with pride in his players for the way they overcame adversity to beat Stourbridge 20-13 in a titanic Regional One Midlands tussle at Avery Fields.
Bournville lost wing Cam Smith with a broken left arm just four minutes into his home debut which meant that they had to play 76 minutes with back-row forward Chris Idehen in the centre.
Having conceded a try in the incident in which Smith was injured Bourns regrouped and produced a dominant physical performance to control the match in miserable weather conditions and bank a second win of the season.
“I really feel for Cam. It was his second game with us and it looks like a pretty serious injury and he was in an awful lot of pain,” Grove said.
“Stourbridge also lost a player in that collision so it was disruptive for both sides. To give a try away so easily really could have rocked us early on. But we came back into the game through dominating territory in that first half, our scrum was pretty good and our lineout functioned significantly better than last week and we spent large periods of the first half in the opposition third. Although we didn’t have a huge amount of points to show for that I think that told I the second half.
“I think it was probably closer than it should have been given our dominance at set piece Physically I thought we were dominant and some of our kicking was quite smart.
“The conditions were hard. It rained all day, the ball was greasy and they didn’t lend themselves to playing fast and furious rugby like we like to. But what impressed me was that we didn’t deviate from the plan or to break away from what was working for us early on.
“The way we controlled that middle third in the second half was really good and Reiss Price and Jacob Fewtwrell should take a lot of credit for that.
“It was a relief to win but I am really proud of the guys . These are the games you want to be involved in, local derbies. They are always closer than they should be because they have that added edge.”
Smith’s injury, after a promising debut at Bridgnorth last week, meant an early enforced reshuffle for Bourns but, having lost two centres – Sam Grimshaw and Josh Bloomfield to injuries against Nuneaton two weeks ago – and with just three replacements permitted at level five, they are demonstrating flexibility and adaptability in coping with setbacks.
“A year or so ago we would been rocked by that injury and used it as an excuse but we just got on with it,” Grove said. “We didn’t have any choice but to adapt but we adapted really well. Chris played in the centre last week so he dropped straight into 12.
“With only three on the bench you have to be flexible, you have to adapt to these situations and we did that well.”
