BOTH Luctonians and Hereford suffered heavy defeats at the weekend.

Lucs went down 40-3 at home to Leicester Lions, while Hereford slumped to a 49-12 loss to Burton in Midlands 1 West.

Devon Constant was the star man for Leicester, bagging a hat-trick of tries.

However it was Luctonians who started the better side and went ahead on 22 minutes thanks to a Louis Silver penalty.

But they struggled to break down the Lions defence and take advantage of their early hard work.

Lions started to claw their way back into game and Lucs lost Silver to injury on the half-hour mark.

Oliver Taylor's try on the stroke of half-time saw the away side go into the break 5-3 to the good.

Leicester then took full advantage of errors made by Lucs after the break and scored three tries in a 10 minute period.

Collecting a loose ball from a Tom Jones charge down, Constant scored in the corner for his first try; Jon Boden converting.

Boden then converted Luke Veebal's try before Constant went over again; Boden again adding the extras.

Ben Stokes added a further try when he collected a Lucs line-out to score; Boden again converting.

Lucs had their chances to reduce the deficit, but the Lions defence held firm and Constant's late try secured the win.

The match was part of a charity fundraiser for Breast Cancer Haven, with the Lucs players wearing pink shirts.

A total of £9,302 was raised.

Meanwhile, Hereford assistant coach Luke Fisher admitted they let themselves down defensively after going down 49-12 to Midlands 1 West high-fliers Burton.

The Wyesiders struggled to compete against their physical opponents and will hope to bounce back this Saturday at home to Camp Hill.

“It was a poor day for us, things didn’t go our way," said Fisher.

"We had a couple of spells when we kept to our structure and played some good rugby, but let ourselves down defensively and this has been our strength in the last few weeks.

"This allowed the well drilled Burton outfit to put us under pressure.

"We shall now go back to the drawing board, put right in training what went wrong today and bounce back stronger.

"However, Luke Yarrington put in a very good shift and newcomer Brad Down brought some energy and made a good first team debut.”

Burton opened the scoring with an early penalty before Hereford's Richard Preece was shown a controversial yellow card.

Burton capitalised by scoring two further tries to give themselves a 20-point margin at the break.

Hereford managed to reduce the deficit thanks to tries from James Watters and James Stubbs, but Burton finished the game in style by adding two further tries.

Meanwhile, Luctonians came from behind to beat Hereford 20-19 in the North Midlands Colts League.

Jack Poulton converted the winning penalty, with Jack Prescott scoring Lucs' solitary try.