Midsomer Norton Rugby hosted their first game of 2014 against the current league leaders, Matson. Norton had not played since 14th December and struggled to train due to the weather. Their opposition had played last week against Norton's local rivals, Chew Valley.
Norton started the game playing down the slope and the home forwards quickly started to dominate the scrummage and mauls. After one line-out, fly half, Ben Taylor, received a quick, clean ball and delayed a pass to his centre, Alex Mitchard, who stormed through the gap, but the visitors' scrambled defence held firm.
Norton continued to use the possession to mount attacks, but the visitors' back row competed well at the breakdown and were very good at slowing down the ball and their fly half kicked well to get them out of trouble. This forced the home side to play too much rugby around the halfway line to regain the ball.
Norton finally made their forward domination pay late in the half, scoring from a line-out close to the Matson line. The ball caught the Norton forwards split off from the initial maul and they drove at a sprint, crossing the line and scoring the game's first points. Ben Moon added the conversion.
Matson immediately replied with a try of their own to level the scores at half-time, 7–7. The visitors now used the slope to their advantage, kicking well to keep the home side on the back foot. Having won a line-out, Matson extended their lead with a second try, with the forwards driving over the line. The try was not converted. Matson quickly extended their lead with a penalty kick following a mistake by the home side, to make the score 7–15.
The fact that Norton hadn't played rugby for nearly a month showed and uncharacteristic mistakes hampered the home side in their attacks, scoring only once from a number of opportunities.
Ben Moon converted a penalty from in front of the posts to put Norton back into a position where they could receive a losing bonus point. But Moon's penalty was cancelled out when Norton were adjudged to have held on to the ball in the tackle, Matson yet again taking advantage of any opportunity given them.
The final minutes saw the home side chasing the losing bonus point, but in the wrong half of the field. Mitchard broke through the Matson defence, beating several players, but his support was too slow in coming to continue the attack and the defence cleared the ball.