Featherstone 34 Coventry Bears 28.
For the second week in succession the Coventry Bears travelled to Yorkshire and were narrowly defeated,but again picked up a bonus point. With a gale blowing in their faces they made the worst possible start, a fumble from the kick off resulted in a try to the home side. From the restart the Bears again coughed up possession and as a result found themselves 12 points down in the first 5 minutes.
The Bears slowly started to build some pressure an Prop Si Perry scored to halt the Lions dominance. Just 2 minutes later the Bears scored again when Centre Stephen Coleman forced his way over in the corner.
The wind and some poor defensive work allowed Featherstone to score twice more before the interval and the Bears went in to the changing rooms trailing by 10 points to 24.
With the wind in their favour the visitors were confident they could pull back the defecit, but again were shocked when the home side opened the scoring.
The Coventry outfit at last started to gel and two further tries from Perry gave real hope of what had seemed an unlikely win at half time.
Against the run of play the Lions stretched their lead again to 10 points.
The never say die Bears had the last say when prolific points scorer Si Perry scored his fourth try of the afternoon.
Head Coach Alan Robinson whilst disappointed remained upbeat about the season so far
“We have had a real baptism of fire as we knew we would in this division. We have won one and gained 2 bonus points from 3 away games. That’s a pretty positive start by anyone’s reckoning. We know we have to play smarter. No one will give us anything, we will have to just dig in and work hard, as the season progresses I know we will get better and better"
Coventry team
Tom Tsang, Tanaka Chamunokara, Stephen Coleman, Sam Montague, Alex Sweeney, Dan Poulton, Scott Clendenning-Fenton, Ashley Hutchinson, Alex Brown, Simon Perry, Chad Grant, Brad Massey, Matt Cooper, Michael Venn, Rhydian Booth, Barry McGuffog, Rob Brown.
Scorers
Tries Coleman, Perry (4).
Conversions Coleman (4)
The BBT man of the match was Simon Perry