Moseley 36 Blackheath 6

Few rugby fans outside of Birmingham will be familiar with Moseley captain Gareth Taylor but the scrum-half has come of age this season and is relishing his new role as skipper of the new league leaders.

While much of the talk before this match centred on Blackheath's absent influential No 9 Harvey Biljon, Moseley's secret weapon was happy to go about his business, pulling the strings at the back of the scrum.

Biljon underwent surgery in midweek and he was sorely missed by the London side who have high expectations this season.

Not that Taylor was disappointed not to be facing the former Wasps and South African international.

"I had a phone call on Wednesday evening saying their scrum-half wasn't in the team," Taylor said, "and I thought 'thank heavens for that'! But even if he had played, I still think we would have won and won handsomely. When we scored that third try at the start of the second half, I think they went to pieces and we capitalised on that."

Taylor led by example, scoring the opening Moseley try after 14 minutes, before Paul Cox added a second ten minutes later. Ollie Thomas converted the first and kicked a penalty as Moseley overhauled a six-point deficit from a brace of penalties by Tyrone Sorour inside the opening seven minutes.

But it was after the break that the home side ran riot. A try, four minutes after the restart, from Carl Colvin gave them a 22-6 lead and further scores from Neil Mason and Andy Binns in the final six minutes ensured a stylish victory and a bonus point to boot to take the Billesley side to the top of the table.

Not even a late yellow card for prop Ben Buxton could wipe the smile from the face of Moseley coach Ian Smith.

"At the end of the day, it was a fantastic performance," he said. "I've told the players that that's the best we have played over last season and what we have had of this season. We looked composed and completely confident.

"Although Blackheath have a lot of great individual players, we did put them under pressure and that is when you can work out if they are going to be a team, or go back to being individuals and I think that is what happened today.

"I thought, after the first 15 minutes, we were well in control and caused them quite a bit of damage as the game went on. I'm hoping we can see that again next week [against Waterloo] in what is going to be another hard game; harder than this one."

He also paid tribute to skipper Taylor, saying: "We all know every side has an unsung hero and he is that sort of character - quiet and unassuming who just gets on with his job.

"He is so honest and so hard-working that if he wasn't playing, then you would really miss him, in every aspect of the game."