The Seconds made their first trip to Bristol Telephones and headed into the Christmas break with their second draw in a row.

With Telephones having ended Cheddar’s unbeaten run the previous week, they continued where they left off, going wide to score the opening try in the first few minutes. However, Norton soon bounced back to take the lead, with Scott Goddard powering through the last defenders over the whitewash after a period of intense Norton pressure, with Murphy calmly adding the extras.

Norton controlled much of the half, and their dominance in the scrum allowed Bicknell to crash over from close range and Murphy extended their lead to 14–5 at the break.

The away side received a wake-up call at the start of the second half when a quick Telephones try cut their lead to two, but the away side were soon back on top. Another dominant scrum allowed Goddard to break off the back, and Knight fed Bicknell, who was unstoppable from close range. Although Murphy could not add the extras from out wide, he soon extended the lead to ten points with a penalty, after Telephones desperately tried to stop Norton extending their lead further.

At this stage Norton were comfortable, but with fifteen minutes to go, the game changed dramatically. Telephones’ prop received a sinbin for stamping, and remarkably discovered that throwing an embarrassing hissy fit was not enough to stop him leaving the field. However, this caused the game to go to uncontested scrums, and Telephones rejigged their team accordingly. Norton, unable to do the same, were now on the back foot in a game they had been dominating. Despite the prop’s return from the bin, the game never went back to contested scrums, and Norton lost Knight for a phantom high tackle. This allowed Telephones to run in two tries in the last ten minutes to level the game.

Despite letting the lead slip late on, this was a good performance from Norton in a tough away fixture. They now sit just two points off second place with three consecutive home fixtures to look forward to when the season resumes in January.