Old Albanians took the honours in a scrappy encounter between two sides struggling at the wrong end of National One.

Despite torrential rain before the match the pitch was perfectly playable and Cinderford took an early lead when outside-half Lloyd Evans kicked a penalty. The visitors came back strongly and when home flanker George Mills was shown a yellow card, they took immediate advantage to score a pushover try through Ollie Cooper-Miller, which Richard Gregg converted.

The penalty count was beginning to mount against Cinderford and the visitors increased their lead when centre Chris Lombaard slipped through a tackle down the blindside and scored a try, which Gregg again converted. As half-time approached the home side put their opponents line under immense pressure and prop Alex Gordas crashed over for an unconverted try.

The second-half proved to be scoreless and descended into farce after the dismissal of Cinderford replacement prop Jake Caulfield and OA’s Andrew Berry, following an off the ball fight. It took several minutes for the match to resume as the home side also had Elliot Booley off injured and the officials struggled to decide on how to proceed.

Neither side looked capable of troubling the scoreboard despite their best efforts, and the match came to an end with the visitors taking a much needed victory and leaving Cinderford really struggling.

Cinderford RFC – Mike Wilcox, Nev Codlin, Stef Hawley, Sam Hanks, Sam Baker, Lloyd Evans, Andy Uren, Alex Gordas, Dave Wheeler, Elliot Booley, Lance Randall, Shay Kerry, George Mills, Rhys Luckwell, George Evans