At the start of the game it looked as though it was going to be another one of those games as the Bees went down to fourteen men. Dan Zaltzman didn’t take too kindly to Graham Dawe’s obstructing arm and as the officials didn’t seam too bothered, Zaltzman decided to take the matter into his own hands prompting chants of “OFF OFF OFF” from the travelling fans. After consulting the touchjudge , Zaltman was sent to the bin and Albion given a penalty. From the line-out’s catch and drive it looked like things were about to get worse for the Bees until the Bees pushed the maul out of play, regaining the ball.

As play went on there looked to be hope, as the Bees stayed strong under the Plymouth pressure, and soon got play back into the right half. Despite losing a number of line-out by throwing over the top, the Bees managed to steal Plymouth ball and Paul Knight looked to be running in, before being tugged back by an Albion defender. With no support Bees were penalised for holding on. However it wasn’t long till the Bees managed to get the points on the board after 20 minutes Bees were awarded a penalty, took the points and added 3 onto the board through a Tim Walsh Penalty.

One area where we did seem to have trouble was once again our line outs. Rather than keeping it simple we kept throwing long, only to miss our jumper with the ball flying into one of the Plymouth player's arms. One case of this almost saw the Bees concede a try as Plymouth caught the ball and dashed to our line. Lucky for the Bees Aaron Takarangi defended superbly throughout the game and forced Plymouth out of play to give the Bees the throw in. Despite not feeling to confident that this would be an advantage, Bees secured the ball and kicked long allowing a bit more breathing space.

Another player who played well in both defence and attack was Paul Knight who managed to save the Bees from conceding a try with his quick thinking kick over the dead ball line after the ball was lost, and looked like a try for Plymouth.

Plymouth didn’t have the monopoly on missed chances as Tim Walsh chipped the ball over the Albion defensive line which stopped just short of the line. With a dead sprint to the ball, it looked as though Plymouth would reach there first only to stumble over the ball leaving it for Bacco to simply pick up and place over the line - only he also missed and fell over the ball.

However, Bees carried on putting pressure on Plymouth who continued to kick away possession, giving the Bees the line out. As before we were unable to use this as time after time the throw went too far. 

Bees carried on putting pressure on the Albion defence and spent most of the first half in an attacking position. Despite the conditions, there was some good passing from the back line before the ball was passed to Tim Walsh who attempted to go for an injury time "free ball" drop goal. Although this missed, the ref called play back to give the Bees another penalty that Walsh converted to make the Bees go in at half time 6 - 0 up.

The rain didn’t seem to ease off at all during the half time break and soon the nice clean shirts that the players were wearing for the second half soon became plastered in mud again. Once again kick off was a scrappy affair as the weather added the risk of handling errors and Plymouth knocked on. Walshy did his checky little chip over the defence and chased before accidently kicking into touch. This time it was the visitor's turn to have a dodgy lineout as they dropped the ball forward to give the Bees the scrum. As the Bees built on phases the Albion forwardswere penalised for coming in at the side of the ruck. However the Bees were unable to capitalise from this as Bacco caught the ball and the ref pulled the game back for a Bees penalty. Bees had no trouble securing the ball this time and passed to Bacco who looked dangerous as he broke through the first wall of defence only to knock on the slippy ball close to the line .

Paul Knight continued to impress as he secured the ball out of the scrum and start a sniping attack on the Plymouth line. But their defence was too strong and caused Bees to knock the ball on. With Plymouth still being deep in their half they tried to kick the ball out to release some of the pressure but the ball didn't go out as far as Plymouth would have hoped.

With line out ball secured, Tim Walsh charged through the Plymouth defence. With a strong attacking phase, the Bees caused Albion to make mistakes giving the Bees firstly a scrum before finally giving away a penalty kick scored by Walsh to make it 9-0.

The soaked fans were beginning to wonder whether any tries would be scored in the appalling conditions, but the next phase gave the Bees supporters what they wanted. Firstly Walsh kicked to Plymouth who returned the compliment before Walsh kicked the ball out of play in the Plymouth half. Jim Jenner secured the line out ball and the forwards drove towards the line. The Albion defence were offside and the ref was playing advantage but Bacco got his hands on the ball and got the try - converted by Walsh. 16 - 0

It looked as though the Bees were going to put more points on the board with a repeater of last weeks brilliant last try. After darting to the line, Paul Knight passed to Bacco, who missed Miles, back to Walsh who kicked across the pitch hoping for Aaron Takarangi to collect the cross kick similar to last week. Sadly the Doncaster move didn’t work out but it got the Bees fans going!

Plymouth managed to get points from their hard work as they camped on the Bees line putting pressure on our defence before they managed to crack the defence with the forwards power and go over in the far left hand corner.

Over all there was a big improvement on the performance despite the appalling conditions. The Bees official man of the match was Gavin Pfister (whos the latest player to have their profile up on the site! - or will be once I‘ve finished this report!) but it could have been a number of players, Aaron Takarangi impressed with some of his try saving tackles and Paul Knight had a good game both in deffense and in attack. Next stop Rotherham!

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