DEVIZES ran out 61-21 winners over struggling county rivals Bradford on Avon last weekend, with debutant Robbie McLean running in four tries on his way to a personal haul of 32 points.

McLean, the grandson of one of Devizes RFC’s best-known players, Ray Smith, was making his debut at fly-half and led his team to a big win as they moved up to sixth in the table.

Devizes started strongly and took the lead when McLean’s invention saw the ball played out wide to Scott Martin, who dotted down. McLean bisected the posts and Devizes had an early 7-0 lead.

Minutes later, the ball found its way to McLean, who ghosted through the visitors' defence to go over. The fly-half converted his own score to make it 14-0.

Bradford then had their best spell of the first half and scored out wide through their extremely pacy and tricky full-back Fin Dewar to reduce the deficit to 14-7.

Unfortunately for the visitors, seven points would be as close as they came to Devizes as their first try appeared to be the catalyst for a scoring blitz from the home side.

Two tries from Rhys Harries was added to by the imperious McLean, giving Devizes a 33-7 lead.

However, Bradford would have the last word of the first half as Dewar grabbed his second to reduce the deficit to 19 points.

Shortly into the second half, Devizes pushed further ahead when some accurate offloading saw the ball worked to full back Tommy Hammill, who stormed past the covering defence to go over.

McLean duly converted, taking Devizes to 40 points.

McLean then bagged his hat-trick with some quick thinking as he broke through the retreating Bradford line to cross over.

Minutes later, the debutant fly-half had his fourth score courtesy of another fine break. This time, Chris Barter converted.

Bradford had their best spell of the second half with 15 minutes to go and dabbed down their third as they hunted a consolation bonus-point try.

However, Bradford would come up short in that effort as Hammil bagged his second try for Devizes to complete the try-scoring. Barter converted to make it 61-21 at the full-time whistle.

Elsewhere, Corsham made it back-to-back wins at the start of 2019 with a 36-31 success at home to Yeovil.