45

Birmingham
Moseley

V

28

Plymouth
Albion

by Ciaran Thomas – Birmingham Mail

Adam Balding praised the response of his Birmingham Moseley side as they bounced back to beat Plymouth Albion 47-28 with a seven try display.

Moseley had fallen to a heavy defeat at Rosslyn Park last week and trailed early but hit back to bag a bonus point before half-time, with two further tries sealing a win that cements their place in the middle pack, and Balding has his sights on toppling seventh placed Chinnor in the remaining games.

“The first ten minutes weren’t great, the next 60 minutes were very good but the last ten minutes we kind of derailed,” Balding said. “But it was a great performance in terms of reacting to last week, the boys went out and expressed themselves and I thought we played really well.

“Plymouth are an attritional side, they certainly caused us problems, but all in all we were the better side, we dropped two over the try line as well so it could’ve been more.

“If we fall behind I always feel we can pull it back, the pleasing thing is the amount of tries we scored and how we scored them, all credit to the players who were superb.

“We probably should be sat a bit higher but we’ve got five games left and we firmly want to finish seventh, we took a massive step towards that today with five points and Chinnor losing so bring them on.”

The Red and Blacks struggled to cope with the Plymouth driving maul in the early stages as twice the visitors pack drove over to open up a 10-0 lead, but Mose soon hit back as Reikiti Maasi broke through.

Oliver Allsopp’s break led to Aquile Smith going over for a second try, before Plymouth edged back ahead through two Thomas Putt penalties.

Mose would seize control of the contest with three tries before the break, a quick tap penalty leading to Gregory Fisilau’s try, before Dan Lewis secured the bonus point and Sam Pointon also crossed.

Pointon completed his brace after the break, before Maasi also claimed a second as Mose notched 40 points for the first time this season.

The result might’ve been secure but Plymouth staged a late rally to earn themselves what could be a crucial bonus point in their battle against relegation, Henry Clement going over after another driving maul before Ben Parsons found the corner in the final minute. 

Attendance: 446