CHINNOR suffered their heaviest defeat of the season as Darlington Mowden Park inflicted a fourth-straight loss in National League 1.

The damage was done in a rampant first half from the hosts, who led 35-5 at the break.

Second half tries from Cameron Terry and Fred Tuilagi cut the deficit, but we were unable to cross again to salvage a bonus point at the Darlington Arena.

The defeat leaves us seventh in National League 1, but the gap is now 14 points to next-placed Cambridge, who we travel to next Saturday.

Director of Rugby, Richard Thorpe made three changes to the XV which were beaten by Caldy a week previously. They were all in the pack, with Ben Manning returning from concussion to captain the side, while lock Ben Glynn and hooker Terry were named in the XV.

However, DMP dominated from start to finish to record back-to-back home wins for the first time since October.

They opened the scoring after six minutes when centre Ben Frankland cut through to dive over under the sticks, before Euan McKirdy and Ollie Walker crossed.

The four-try bonus point was then secured by the half-hour mark, when Walker scored his second. Warren Seals converted all four tries to give DMP a commanding 28-0 lead.

We got off the mark through James Bourton’s interception try, but there was still time for the home side to add to their tally before the break and Ralph Appleby dived over to make it 35-5.

With Joe Craggs in the sin bin, we scored our second try when Terry drove over from a lineout on 50 minutes but, despite having the extra man, we were unable to stop DMP crossing for a sixth time as George Shannon powered across.

The hosts were again reduced to 14 men when Garry Law was yellow carded and Tuilagi forced his way over late on, but we were unable to find another try to take at least a point away from a disappointing day.

Darlington Mowden Park: Jarvis, Asher-Wood, Frankland, Mackenzie, Walker, Seals, McKirdy, Appleby, Shannon, Guest, Fisher, Davies, Craggs, Jones, Hodgson.
Reps: Grant, Newstead, Lockwood, Law, McCartney.

Chinnor: Bourton, Goss, Worrall, Yawayawa, Hammond, Titchener, Carter, Tonga’uiha, Terry, Hunt, Glynn, Brockschmidt, W Ryan, Manning, Tuilagi.
Reps: Lines, Robinson, Curry, North, Walsh.

Picture credit: Christopher Booth