Lichfield 69 Hereford 0

Take nothing from Lichfield this was a heavy defeat by any reckoning.

The Hereford team showing six changes from last week’s team worked hard.  With little possession or field position they never looked likely to cause any trouble to Lichfield. Their injury list which started at 15 might well be increased by 3 more after injuries to Alex Thomson, Callum Gunn, Matt Frost and Jack Goodwin had forced them from the field.
Lichfield started as they meant to go on with three tries and a 21 points lead in the first quarter hour.
They carried on in this vein racking up a half time lead of 38 points and a final 69 points to nil result. The spirit of this Hereford team was illustrated by the way in which the denuded team picked up their defensive structure in the final quarter of the game.   There were some hard working and spirited performances by Hereford players. Regulars Mark Philo, Tom Ewins, Fran Jennings and Ollie Hutcheson worked hard.  As did our debutants Callum Gunn and Rory Edwards and the rest of the 18.
But pure effort was not enough.  The Lichfield well drilled and executed will to win was always going to be victorious.
After the game, a positive Head Coach, Scott Sturdy, said “A very difficult trip to Lichfield today, we have a lot of injured players, but I don’t want to make excuses. We didn’t start the game well and Lichfield really took advantage of that. They were well organised, very energised and did the basic things well allowing them to get into an early lead. We then struggled whenever we got any territory or possession.
We didn’t execute and this allowed Lichfield to widen the score.
As we approached half time, we picked up a lot of injuries, ending up in the second half playing with twelve, thirteen, or fourteen players on the pitch for most of the last 40 minutes.  The score line reflected the lack of Hereford players on the pitch.

What I urge everybody to understand, there’s no need to panic!

We’ve had a very difficult run of two games against probably the best teams in the league. We have a long injury list, but we’ll regroup in the week.  Let’s get next week’s game out of the way, we then have a week off to sort everybody out. We’ll get them back on the field and push on from there.
I reiterate, do not panic, this number of injuries is a complete anomaly and we’ll kick on in a couple of weeks’ time.”
Next week Hereford entertain Ludlow who this week-end trounced Droitwich by 99 points to nil.