Match report: Burnage 0 Preston Grasshoppers 59

From the kick off Hoppers were dominant.

Their pack drove their hosts at will in the scrum whilst fast, accurate passing moves saw the backs slicing through the opposition lines time after time and a total of nine unanswered tries secured an emphatic win despite the Burnage team’s dogged performance.

Trouble started early for the home side when their full back attempted to call for a mark inside his own 5m line but dropped the ball.

Hoppers drove the scrum and Matt Lamprey crossed the line.

Alex Ward then stepped up to kick the first of his seven successful conversions of the afternoon.

Burnage did not roll over and had their share of possession and attacks into the Preston half but were unable to break the Hoppers’ defence even when they were in the Red Zone.

With a quarter of the match remaining Hoppers looked like scoring every time they had the ball and their intensity of play was underlined when, in the last five minutes, with the game put to bed, they notched up two more tries.

Hoppers were relentless in their penetration of the home defence and tries by 
Jordan Dorrington, Tyler Spence, Alex Ward, Oga Mabaya, Sam Gale and a hat trick by team captain, 
Chris Taylor sealed the victory.

There could have been a further seven points when Sam Stott broke through in the dying minutes and raced 30 metres to touch down under the posts, only for his effort to be held up on the line.

After the match Preston director of rugby Gareth Dyer said: “I’m really pleased with the attitude from last week’s game.

“We wanted to make sure we came out and gave a performance we could be proud of.

“And the intensity, the accuracy, all the things that were missing last week, we’ve worked hard on during training and I thought that was a decent performance today.’