Wheatley were slow to come out of the blocks in this BBO Prem fixture conceding 4 tries inside 20 minutes, Oxford were full of running with a very mobile pack made the most of some poor first up defending and produced some clinical finishing to ultimately give Wheatley a mountain to climb.

Wheatley's struggle to gain a foot hold in the game was compounded on 25 minutes loosing Number 8 Jack Atkinson to a hamstring injury, Wheatley did manage to start to string some phases together with strong running from Ezra Rees and Alex Gabbidon but all to often the ball would go to ground and force the scrum.

Wheatley were caught napping after the re-start conceding a try immediately but to their credit the Purple men didn't give up and started to show signs of what we know we can deliver and gaining some control over the speed of play.

Wheatley lost Jack Smith, Oli Kenworthy and Spencer Bailey to injury in the second half and Jeremy Tanner to 2 yellow cards forcing the purple men to finish with 13 men.

This did seem to bring Wheatley together with a 7 man scrum the hosts were able to take one against the head and grab a cancellation try for Dan Rule.

Oxford also finished with 14 having had Jack Savage Red Carded for punching.

Bitter pill to swallow for Wheatley as on another day we would have given a much stronger account of ourselves and this would have been a much tighter affair.

We roll on to next week with break from the league fixtures and host Oxford Whippets in the County Shield on Sunday. With no fixture for the Outlaws some much needed R & R for the walking wounded and thankfully some returning players should be back in action.

Final score 36-5