COVENTRY Bears gained their first League One win of the season with a hard-fought victory in Hemel Hempstead.
Bears roared off the starting blocks and within four minutes signalled their intent as Errol Carter scored over on the right.
Within minutes it was Dante Morley-Samuels opening his account with the help of Kieron Sherratt and Ben Stead made no mistake with the conversion to make it 10-0.
Jason Bass was next to go on the scoresheet as he crossed over midway through the first half.
Hemel then started to fight back but the Bears went in with a 16-0 lead thanks to some good defending.
The Stags came out refreshed and were soon on the scoreboard pulling the margin back to ten points.
After some stout defending against a resurgent home side, Harry Chapman burrowed over and Ben Stead converted to put the score at 22-6.
The Stags were wounded, but by no means finished and scored again with just eight minutes left.
A momentary Bears lapse let them over again, but the Bears hung on to emerge victorious 22-16.
Speaking to the Observer after the match, Bears head coach Tom Tsang said: “We started off with good intensity and played with fast tempo which is what we needed.
“We raced out to a lead and at that point needed to stick to the plan but we started to go wide too early which let Hemel off the hook.
“That combined with some unforced errors meant we went in at halftime not as far ahead as we could have been.
“In the second half we made more errors and Hemel got their tails up.
“We dominated the opening 30 minutes and that three-try buffer was enough in the end.
“It’s great to get our first league win of the season. We also had three debutants in Liam Rice-Wilson, James Mason and Ben Gray. All worked extremely hard and contributed positively to our win.”
On Sunday, Bears are at home to Pilkington Recs in the fourth round of the Challenge Cup.
