Nuneaton deliver the knockout blow to Spa in a 20-minute spell

Nuneaton pushed an early penalty attempt wide before Spa got into stride.

The half-back pairing of Gareth Shuttleworth and Sam Nunn were prominent in getting the ball away to Pete Blunt for an early forage into Nuns territory.

Then Chris Harrison tested the home defence with the first of a series of penetrating runs.

Spa capitalised on their fine start with a well-worked try.

The new centre pairing of Chris Murphy and Ross Waterhouse punched a hole in the home defence and the ball was quickly recycled by the supporting forwards for Dan Kane to bulldoze his way over. Tom Phipps added the conversion.

On the half-hour, Nuns got on to the scoresheet with a penalty goal and they then caught the Spa defence napping, using their pace on the right wing to score in the corner and take a slender 8-7 lead into half-time.

Having competed well, Spa will have been disappointed to be losing at this stage.

However, they saw the game get away from them in the opening 20 minutes of the second period as they struggled to contain Nuneaton’s attacking threat.

Last-ditch defending prevented a try in the opening seconds before the home side increased their lead with another penalty goal and an unconverted score.

In between these incursions, Sam Nunn had to step in to clear his line with a couple of hefty boots out of defence.

The home pressure was further rewarded with another penalty and a try.

Leamington did manage a rally in the final ten minutes, putting Nuns under real pressure.

A poor kick out of defence was fielded by Tom Phipps, who set the pacy Jamie Harrison away for a consolation score.