Pritchard happy to bounce back

Bedford skipper James Pritchard was thrilled to get back to winning ways after his team’s 24-13 victory against Nottingham at Meadow Lane.

Despite not being at their best, Bedford rarely looked in trouble and wrapped up the win with tries from Will Fraser, Sam Walsh and Brendan Burke.

It was their first win at Nottingham’s latest home ground and it leaves them third in the table behind London Welsh and promotion favourites Worcester.

After another 100% record with the boot, Pritchard said:  “It was important to bounce back after last week, we had to forget about that and come out all guns blazing.

“We’ve struggled here before because Nottingham are a very strong team so it feels good the get the win.

“There were a few mistakes from both teams in the first-half, I think we were figuring each other out more than anything.”

Bedford deservedly led 10-3 at half time after dominating for the majority of the opening period.

In the second-half, the Blues upped the tempo and secured the win with a couple of neatly worked tries.

“We’ve shown how strong our defence is this season so we were happy to give them the ball and see what they had to offer,” Pritchard added.

“We trust our defending because we’ve been working hard on it all year and we knew that we could always score later on.

Before the game Mike Rayer admitted it was crucial to bounce back from the defeat to Worcester and that became even more vital following the league leaders surprising defeat against Cornish Pirates.

“It was crucial that we took advantage of Worcester’s slip up on Friday because you can see from the table that this league is so tight at the top.

“Five points would have been great today but we’re just delighted to make up some ground and hit back from last week.”