Bristol Academy Flyers II slipped to their first defeat of the season losing at Home 54 points to 60 to Bognor Pirates. Flyers II, who had a perfect record in Division IV South West until the weekend left WISE very disappointed with their performance. Flyers started slowly and missing key players through injury found a lead hard to come by. However, by the end of the half they had moved into a lead winning the half 33 points to 27 and looked to be in control of the game.
The third quarter followed a similar vein with Flyers holding on to a narrow lead but never quite being able to pull away from the visitors. The fourth quarter again started well and Flyers tried to build on the lead and open up a gap but naivety and a lack of experience gave Bognor the chance they needed as they managed to gain the lead with 1 minute 30 on the clock and despite Flyers efforts held on to the lead to the buzzer.
“This was the poorest performance I have seen from this team in a long time, Bognor deserved their win today they worked hard to take the lead and when they did they were smart enough to hold onto it. We have been plagued by injury in the last few weeks and were missing key players however with the strength and depth in this squad I hoped for more from the team. They have let themselves down today which is really frustrating but they are young and they will learn from this mistake. We will not dwell on this performance and must dust ourselves down and get back to the job in hand. One loss will not lose the chance to do well; we must just make sure it does not happen again” Danny James, Head Coach.