Promotion-chasing Bridgnorth wary of Stoke threat

The All Blacks head to Stoke on Saturday sitting third in the Regional One Midlands standings, just three points behind Syston and with a game in hand.

It will be Bridgnorth’s first away trip since February 4 and head coach Bryan Smallman is preparing his troops for a tough test.

“Stoke on Saturday will be another tough challenge,” said Smallman, who saw his side beat Burton 20-14 last weekend to make it three home wins on the spin.

“They do a few different things, like putting nine men in the lineout and that’s something we didn’t cope with too well at home when we won by six points.

“But we have looked at the video and seen a few things we can identify and try to target.”

Bridgnorth had to withstand some late pressure to get the better of Burton last week.

“We were sat on our own try line at the end with Burton trying to win the game,” he said. “We were 17-7 up and playing some good rugby, but then we had a lapse that saw us reduced to 14 and concede a penalty try. It took an heroic effort at the end to turn the ball over and clinch the win.

“There were some really sharp tackles going in and we had got it wrong when we were trying to turn the ball over we would have probably been reduced to 13 and lost the game.

“We have shown that we can come from behind to win games but we have to learn to control games better when we are in front. We gave away some soft penalties and we need to make sides play out rather than giving them an easy out.”

Bridgnorth’s tries came from George Newman, Jonah Boyce and Tom Foster whole Elliot Murphy added a conversion and a penalty.