It has been an unfortunate spell for teams travelling to Bury St Edmunds.When Bury Town hosted Malvern in the Southern League on Tuesday last week, it turned into a late night for home manager Richard Wilkins, who is also head coach at the Sports Academy, and assistant Michael Steward.

Neil Reader

It has been an unfortunate spell for teams travelling to Bury St Edmunds.

When Bury Town hosted Malvern in the Southern League on Tuesday last week, it turned into a late night for home manager Richard Wilkins, who is also head coach at the Sports Academy, and assistant Michael Steward.

The Malvern coach broke down on the way, but because of the fixture backlog the match had to be played, with a kick-off at 9pm, and a late finish.

Malvern didn't have any more luck on the pitch, crashing to a 7-0 defeat. Worse was to follow, as their replacement coach also broke down on the way home. I hear they arrived back in Worcestershire at 5.30am.

There must have been something in the air, as the same thing happened to Loughborough College, who were due to visit Hardwick Heath the following day. A call was received from Loughborough, explaining that their minibus had broken down soon after leaving and they were unable to fulfil the match. To have a game postponed because of rain or a frozen pitch is frustrating but to lose a match through mechanical failure is very frustrating. Yet another match we have to reschedule.

On the pitch the two matches played were both close affairs. A trip to Boreham Wood in the Floodlit League saw us lose 1-0. After a scrappy first-half display, when we kept giving away position, we should have got something out of the match but squandered a number of good chances after the break.

We are still playing catch-up in the Essex and Suffolk League. Our opponents on Saturday, University of Essex, had played ten more matches than us. We shared six goals with our fellow scholars, trailing twice but taking the lead with ten minutes left. We couldn't hold on and the university students equalised with five minutes on the clock. It was a slightly disappointing result in the end, but a decent point nonetheless, against one of the strongest teams in the league.

Rugby players have been asked to assist the RFU in running the emerging schools tournament at Thetford RUFC today. They also sent two teams to the Norwich 10s competition yesterday, when our male footballers were also due to travel to Grimsby College for a quarter-final match in the English Colleges cup.

Keep up-to-date with the results at www.burymercury.co.uk