Rugby Correspondent Brian Dick on a bizarre season for Phil Maynard's team...
It's no wonder Pertemps Bees had trouble kicking points this season; their campaign was laid to waste two-thirds of the way through when the goalposts were moved.
Perhaps more than any other side in National One, the Sharmans Cross outfit failed to regain their footing after the relegation rug was pulled away when the Rugby Football Union decided to expand the division.
At that point, in mid-March, Bees were fighting themselves to a standstill in an effort to avoid finishing in the bottom two. But once the consequence for so doing was removed, so was the motivation and a battered squad did just that - stood still.
Four of the next five matches were lost, an average of 36 points a game were conceded, on one occasion they failed to field a full 22 and ended up finishing bottom of the league.
Do you think it had an effect?
In an otherwise forgettable year, the weeks preceding the governing body's ruling stick out as quite exceptional. But to fully understand how, one must recall a time when the slope signposted 'National Two' was still sufficiently slippy and fully operative.
Following a miserable December, in which losses at Doncaster and Nottingham marked the nadir of Phil Maynard's four-year reign at the club, the players and coaching staff held a summit meeting to thrash out a way forward.
Would the team be allowed to disintegrate and drift into relegation or would everyone increase their commitment and dig deep? The response was a resounding redoubling of effort.
The end-product was something to behold. A nervy win over fellow strugglers London Welsh was their first success in more than two months. Then followed victory in what would have been a pivotal game at the bottom of the table - a 12-6 triumph over Sedgley Park.
It was dour and unattractive in the extreme but, at the time, the manner of the result appeared seismic. In as physical an 80 minutes as they can have played all season, Bees were trailing 6-5 and on the last play of the game.
Then flanker Cae Trayhern, player of the year, dragged half the visiting team 20 yards to within a step of their posts, possession was recycled and Tim Walsh looped round the wing to touch down in the corner.
Bees had won a heartstopper and it seemed as though their intoxicating collective will would be all they needed to retain their position at level two.
They took two points from their game at Coventry and not just beat Exeter but beat them very, very well. They had taken 14 of 20 points and had real momentum.
But the bandwagon wheels were wobbling and, after throwing the kitchen sink, table, fridge and evening meal at the Cornish Pirates, they came off in spectacular fashion at home to Bedford.
The 68-16 rout not only hurt them mentally, but also physically, as three forwards were virtually carried off inside 20 minutes. A few more casualties at Rotherham and they were out on their broken feet.
It is a theme that was common throughout the season. If Maynard thought the injury problems experienced in 2004-05 bit deeply, they were little more than an infant's gummy suck compared to this season's shark attack.
At second row Rob Hurrell and Ben Hughes suffered problems that ultimately led to them leaving the club, Will Matthews appeared to have suffered a year-ending injury, Ed Orgee missed a large portion of the season and Duncan White chipped a bone in his leg late on.
Other positions were affected. The back row was hit hard and resources on the wing were stretched beyond breaking point but had anything serious been riding on the outcome, it is reasonable to assume the club's coffers would have found a few more pennies to call in the cavalry.
Half-back was a troublesome area but not for fitness reasons. Tim Walsh's loss of form and confidence as a place-kicker had ramifications inside him.
Maynard had no-one to replace the fly-half, yet noone else in the first team was a recognised kicker. Veteran Ben Harvey was elevated to starting scrum-half by virtue of his 80 per cent accuracy with the boot.
While he could never claim to be the defensive bulwark Paul Knight had been. Bees were having to compromise in one area to be strong in another.
Then there was their remarkably inventive propensity to shoot themselves in the foot. Winning situations or potential points were sacrificed in all manner of ways - dropped passes, missed tackles and errant kicks that hurt most sides but that was only the beginning.
Against Rotherham at home, last November, they were 14 points down before their opponents had mounted an attack, with Ryan Lamb having a clearance charged down and Nick Baxter's fumble being returned the length of the pitch. Bees lost by a point. A month later, they led Newbury by a try seven minutes into injury time. Result? A 22-22 draw.
Even when they crossed the line, as Trayhern did in the cup game against Otley to level the scores, the try was disallowed as one of their number thumped an opponent off the ball.
Then, by the end of the season when they actually beat Newbury in the penultimate game of the year, the league over-turned the r esult and awarded the hosts a 0-0 victory because Bees had been forced to play three ineligible players. It summed up a truly bizarre year.
