AN IMPRESSIVE performance against their fourth-placed hosts just failed to yield a victory in Devizes’ South West One East derby.

Devizes suffered an early blow when Andy Thompson was forced off with a hip problem, James Last coming on for his first first-team appearance of the season and Rory Brown shifting to fly-half.

Swindon opened the scoring with a converted try but Devizes responded and were rewarded as Jake Richardson touched down after a blindside move off a scrum, Brown just missing the conversion.

Swindon fly-half Adam Westall landed a huge penalty after Last had been sin-binned for the visitors but in the second half, it was the hosts that lost discipline, going down to 13 men for a time as Devizes played some fine rugby.

It wasn’t until Swindon were back at full strength that the visitors scored though, second row Lewis Paget finishing a fine move well.

The Saddlebacks went into the lead as Swindon were penalised repeatedly and a rolling maul allowed Craig Bryant’s run to set up second row Damon Murphy.

Last appeared to touch down in the corner, only for the score to be chalked off by a touch judge’s flag and Swindon appeared to have set up victory with a 60 metre move that yielded a try, only for Westall’s conversion to win it to miss the posts.

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