HEREFORD RFC suffered a heavy defeat on the road as Lichfield ran out 69-0 winners.

Lichfield started as they meant to go on with three tries and a 21 points lead in the first 15 minutes.

They carried on in this vein racking up a half-time lead of 38 points and a final 69-0 result.

After the game, a positive head coach, Scott Sturdy, said: “It was a very difficult trip to Lichfield today, we have a lot of injured players, but I don’t want to make excuses.

"We didn’t start the game well and Lichfield really took advantage of that.

"They were well organised, very energised and did the basic things well allowing them to get into an early lead.

"We then struggled whenever we got any territory or possession, we didn’t execute and this allowed Lichfield to widen the score.

"As we approached half-time, we picked up a lot of injuries, ending up in the second half playing with 12, 13, or 14 players on the pitch for most of the last 40 minutes and the score-line reflected the lack of Hereford players on the pitch.

"What I urge everybody to understand, there’s no need to panic, we’ve had a very difficult run of two games against probably the best teams in the league.

"We have a long injury list, but we’ll regroup in the week, get next week’s game out of the way, have a week off to sort everybody out and get them back on the field and push on from there.

On Saturday, Hereford entertain Ludlow who beat Droitwich 99-0.