On a windy but dry day the two sides came into Saturdays match from opposite ends of the form table. Banbury, who have only lost one game all season and had only made one enforced change to their squad, came up against a Leamington side that have now lost six on the bounce despite making a positive start to the season.

Banbury won the toss and elected to play into the wind in the first half. This led to Banbury having the majority of possession, but mainly in their own half. The elements forced the Bulls to play out of defence and with positive results. Three or four good opportunities went begging before the Bulls opened the scoring with a well worked blind side move at the scrum that saw Josh Deegan (pictured) dive over in the corner. Skipper Ed Phillips was wide with the conversion. 5-0.

Banbury continued to run from deep. The Bulls had a scrum 10 metres out from their own line, and Leamington did well to wheel the scrum away from the Banbury backline. This forced Phillips to pick the ball and take on a short blindside, he broke away from the back row and found Deegan who in turn linked up with Simon Brand who off loaded out of contact on the half way line. Banbury were now in behind the visitors defence and the back line combined well to see full back Joe Mills crashing over in the opposite corner to finish a wonderful team move to make the score 10-0. Phillips was again off target from the tee.

The third and final try of the half came from a loose clearance kick from Leamington, Joe Mills collecting the ball and passing in field to Adam Walsh who spun through one tackle and then side stepped two more would be defenders and dotted down under the posts, giving the skipper an easy kick for the 2 points and the bulls deservedly went into the half time break 17-0 up. Both sides would have wanted more to show for their efforts, Leamington missed 3 very kickable penalties and the Bulls could and should have crossed the line at least twice more.

After the turn around, Banbury now had the wind at their backs and it looked like a tall order for the visitors to get back into the match. This became an even harder prospect as Banbury were the next side to score. Walsh went over in the corner, the skipper again off target. 22-0.

Ian Isham scored a great solo try from the very next kick off, he gathered the high ball, shrugged of a tackler and found himself in space, a show-and-go past the next defender left him with a foot race to the line with the Leamington winger. Despite the winger catching him, Isham proved too strong and fended him off and touched down, again in the corner, Phillips finally converted to give the Bulls a 29-0 lead.

The tries came thick and fast as Leamington struggled to contain the rampant Bulls, Banbury added 4 more tries through Sam Stoop, Matt Goode, Alex Stevenson and Mills added his second. Stevenson taking over the kicking duties as he came off the bench slotted 3 out of 4 attempts.

Leamington rallied towards the end, to show they are a better side than they had displayed so far in the afternoon and added two tries of their own. The visitors will want to build on this for next week while Banbury will put this down to a lack of concentration after the game had been won for some time.

The Bulls now turn their attention to the Midlands Intermediate Cup 2nd round home tie against Camp Hill on Saturday 28th November, kick off 2.15pm.