DESPITE scoring two late tries Hereford fell to a 29-27 defeat in their final league game of the season against Stratford upon Avon.

Director of Rugby, Bob Stewart, was ruining his side conceding four unanswered tries within 20 minutes as the hosts fell from 15-5 ahead to 14 points behind, a task which was too much for the Wyesiders.

Stewart said: "At half-time we were 15-10 up, but even at that stage we were still flat, we lacked that bit of spark we normally have, the bite wasn’t there and the attitude wasn’t right.

"It might be down to the pressure being off after getting ourselves out of the relegation dogfight and during the interval we talked about raising the spark and attitude, but again we restarted flat.

"In the last 15 minutes we were outstanding. We had more bite at the breakdown, clearing out well and getting good ball, the attitude was better and with more go forward we scored a couple of tries. Really, we should have scored several more tries in the second half, but the upshot is we lost by two points.

"Overall, we played for 25 minutes out of 80 and scored five tries, so if we could have played for 80 minutes with a bit better attitude, then we might have had a comfortable win. "So, onwards and upwards.”

Stratford started on the front foot and took the lead within seven minutes outflanking the Hereford defence to score an unconverted effort in the corner.

Stewart's side responded and within minutes were level, Leon Parsons pounced on a Stratford mistake and off-loaded to Ben Osborne who jinked past several defenders to score a brilliant individual try.

The Wyesiders were making their mark and moved quickly across the line for Leon Parsons to touch down their second try in the corner.

They were 15-5 to the good with 24 minutes played executing a catch and drive try for hooker Luke Fisher to score. The conversion attempts all failed.

However, the tide turned on 34 minutes with Stratford replying before the break and Hereford lost influential centre Tom Ewins with a foot injury.

Stratford had their best spell for 20 minutes in the second half registering three unanswered tries, two of which were converted leaving them 29-15 ahead.

During the final 20 minutes, Hereford came back into the tie and look dangerous but were left frustrated by the tight Stratford defence.

The visitor's line was eventually broken with four minutes remaining when Will Ford made an elusive 50-yard run to score the bonus point try.

With just a minute of normal time to go a Ben Osborne break set up the fifth Hereford try for Perry Pudge who touched down under the posts, but time ran out with the home team continuing to press for a winning score.