Burton secured promotion to the Midlands league with a comprehensive victory over their Staffordshire opponents. Indeed, this was also the heaviest ever defeat that Walsall have suffered at Delves Road.
They scored ten tries, and incredibly, centre Tom Bartram converted everyone! The hosts held their rampaging opponents at bay for the first twenty minutes. But tries by Banton,Brooks,Dutton and Philliskirk gave them a 28 – 7 half time lead.
No 8 Adam Parr scored and Matt Wood converted the Walsall try just before the interval.
The second half started with another try for scrum half Banton, a former Walsall player. This was followed by two tries for centre Betty. Both Burton wingers, Smith and Brooks scored second half tries. While centre Bartram had an excellent afternoon, scoring the penultimate try and putting over all ten conversions. This included an excellent touchline kick.
Walsall can offer excuses, in that unavailability and injuries meant that they were forced to make four changes to their back division. But even at full strength, they would have struggled to contain the Burton backs.
The home pack, have showed themselves to be one of the strongest set of forwards in the league this year, and they again performed admirably well. But, the visiting pack battled hard for every ball and produced enough possession for their slick set of backs to use. This they did in an impressive way, scoring nine of the ten tries. Walsall will now attempt to recover from this experience to play their final league game this Saturday. Halesonians are the visitors to Delves Road.