Bedford Academy, exceptionally well drilled and pacy, put on a delightful display of running rugby to rack up a comprehensive victory like their first team counterparts at Goldington Road.

Bedford moved the ball slickly and Scottish struggled to contain their movement, particularly their exceptional pace at full back and flanker.

Scottish enjoyed a fair share of possession and enjoyed some spells of concerted pressure, but, despite McArthur’s darting breaks were unable to breach the strong Bedford defence. Scottish scrummaged well and put in an impressive forward effort, particularly from Faraon and Thompson who also played for the Highlanders against Richmond earlier in the afternoon. But injuries in the Highlanders game prevented us to put out the full squad we would have liked to and credit must go to the lads who kept on going.

We know it is a long way to go but we have to start somewhere and to start against a very strong Ulster and then Bedford Blues this weekend, the best academy outside the Premiership, was a tall ask but it sets the marker for where we need to be if we are serious about a healthy club and feeding players to the professional setup.

Team: 15 Josh Graham; 14 Louie Salmon, 13 Jamie Bamford, 12 Freddie Firth, 11 Kit Macinnes- Manby; 10 Robbie Macdonald, 9 Tom McArthur; 8 Ian Brooks, 7 Alvise Faraon, 6 Hamish Coventry; 5 Luke Thompson, 4 Charlie Watts; 3 Shane Logan, 2 Marcus Bailey, 1 Tom Pellet.
Replacements: Charlie Currie, Carlo Castaldo, Delroy Sabau.

Scoring sequence: 0-7 (3 mins), 0-12 (10), 0-17 (20), 0-22 (28), 0-27 (38), 0-34 (40); 0-39 (42), 0-44 (48), 0-51 (60), 0-58 (69).

Conditions: Hot and sunny. Pitch hard.