Cleve 22 Barnstaple 16: Cleve bounced back after suffering consecutive defeats against Chinnor and Chippenham to overcome a resilient Barnstaple side in atrocious weather conditions at the Hayfields.

Torrential rain and gale-force winds ruled out any possibility of either team playing expansively, but the contest had its fair share of excitement and drama as the home side's dogged determination came through to edge the contest.

The visitors didn't do much wrong and might have wondered how they let this one get away.

The Devon outfit had the better of the set-piece. They edged the line-out and dominated the scrum, often shunting the Bristol side back at a rate of knots.

But Cleve were lively in the loose and showed great determination and commitment, which didn't go unnoticed by their coach, Craig Short.

"The conditions made it very difficult to get anything going out there but I thought we played some outstanding rugby in the first half," he said.

"We played against the conditions in the first period and got the ball over their line twice but couldn't get it down.

"They got their try and kicked their penalties, which gave them the lead, but we were in it at the break and we just told the lads to play the corners and put pressure on them in the second half.

"It was a case of getting down into their 22 and coming away with points, which we did.

"We had to make six changes to the team that played last week and I thought all the young lads that came in did themselves proud," he said.

Cleve got off to a great start when scrum-half Ross Bennett burrowed his way over in the third minute for an unconverted try.

Barnstaple hit back with a Joe Wearne penalty on 16 minutes. Wearne was again on target two minutes later when he landed a conversion after centre Mark Fatialofa had dived on a loose ball in the Cleve in-goal area to score.

Cleve pressed and had a try by Craig Trump chalked off after the referee decided that the openside flanker had lost the ball while in the act of grounding it. Wearne's second penalty, on 35 minutes, gave the visitors a 13-5 lead going into the interval. Flanker Tom Pool was next on the scoresheet for the home side after he won the race to the ball after Bennett had kicked ahead. Wearne extended the visitors' lead with another penalty in the 57th minute to make it 16-10 and it looked like they might hold on.

But Cleve had other ideas and produced a rousing final quarter. The Mangotsfield club were rewarded when prop Olly Coles was driven over by his pack to bring the home side to within a point. Coles was again the beneficiary on the stroke of full-time when he was driven over by the forwards after a replica move.