High five as Bedford end Richmond’s dominance

BEDFORD Blues maintained their unbeaten record at Goldington Road this season as they finally banished their Richmond hoodoo on Friday night.

Steve Hill’s side had won each of the past three meetings but never looked anywhere near making it four on the spin as Bedford dominated from start to finish to set up a very interesting finale to the campaign on home soil.

Bedford will head into April without defeat at Goldington Road but have fellow top four rivals Ealing, Jersey and Coventry still to visit their home fortress in the final month of the campaign.

Blues went ahead inside four minutes as Sean French notched his 14th of the campaign – and 11th in just his last seven appearances – and they never looked back from there.

With rain swirling in and a sightly sodden surface under foot, both sides elected to kick much more than the crowd would have expected but Bedford were always that one step ahead and constantly forced the mistake from their visitors.

Further tries from Luke Frost and Joel Matavesi had them 24-0 to the good at the break.

In truth, Richmond didn’t lay a glove in the first half but sprung into life at the start of the second half and got on the scoreboard just 78 seconds after the restart as full back Darren Atkins went over in the corner.

They had opportunities to really make a fight of it with a spell of possession inside the Bedford half but they couldn’t add to their score as Blues repelled everything that was thrown their way including a sequence of seven phases on the try line.

The home side bided their time and when Tui Uru dotted down off the back of a maul for the bonus point score, that was it as a contest.

Jack Hughes continued his purple patch with the fifth score as Bedford made it six league wins from their last seven outings.

Try scorer Frost said: “My girlfriend’s dad is a Richmond supporter so for two years I’ve had him in my ear saying we haven’t beaten them. We’ve been waiting for this result, I thought defensively we were excellent and it’s a really pleasing evening.

“We feel really confident at home but we’re not getting ahead of ourselves because there’s some really difficult fixtures from now until the end of the season, particularly at Goldington Road.”