New Ravens 12, Leamington Royals 70.

NEW Ravens were beaten by a well drilled Leamington side.

Ravens took to the field with five changes, including Ed Lang who has left to join National League side Coventry Bears.

The visitors gave the Ravens a lesson in rugby in the opening 20 minutes, scoring four unanswered tries to make it 24-0.

A shell-shocked Ravens then started to come back into their own and get to grips with the Royals, playing some good rugby.

This was rewarded on 35 minutes when the Ravens pack worked their way up the slope with a superb offload out of a tackle by prop Matt Jupp and and acting half-back Jason Spafford burrowed his way under the Leamington defence to score the Ravens first points of the game. The try was converted by Sean Sudworth.

But the Royals hit back near enough straight away with an unconverted try to give them a 28-6 half-time lead.

The second period started the same as the first as the Royals scored two more tries before Chris Lowe fended off four tackles to score a try from 20 metres out, also converted by Sudworth.

Five minutes later the home side were down to 12 men as Matt Jupp was sent to the sin-bin for persistent offending, although Ravens held out without the opposition scoring.

However, the Ravens were undone by some unfortunate bounces of the ball from Leamington kicks as the visitors ran in three more tries.

By this point, the under strength Raven’s side started to run out of steam and Leamington scored another two tries to give them a tally of 12 for the game.

Man-of-the-match for the Ravens was centre Sean Flynn for the amount of tackling and work he got through and the next game is at Telford on Saturday (2.30pm).

Training is at Bromsgrove’s Finstall Park ground on Wednesday nights with a 7.30pm start and all players, old and new, are welcome.