Bda President's Select XV 17

Atlanta Renegades 41

The sending off of Devrae Noel-Simmons towards the end of this clash summed up Bermuda's frustrations in a nutshell.

Though they were fielding a second 15, with the first team preparing for their match against the Caymans next week, and had not played a 15-a-side game so far this season, the Island side will be deeply disappointed at the way they allowed the Renegades to dictate proceedings from the off.

With tries coming at regular intervals for Atlanta it took Bermuda 28 minutes to get a score of their own, Shane Coman going over after good work by Nick Seddon. Graeme Fergusson's conversion made the score 19-7, but it took just three minutes for Atlanta to put some more points on the board.

At half-time Atlanta led 24-7 and though a penalty by Fergusson reduced the arrears to 14 points Atlanta continued to dominate and added two more quick tries soon after.

Jason Scott restored some pride with an immediate reply and Fergusson's conversion made the score 36-17.

But the 40-point barrier was not long in being broken and it was this psychological blow that appeared to get the better of Noel-Simmons who launched what one observer described quite accurately as "an outrageously late hit" on a opponent.

Bermuda's national captain, Alvin Harvey, who was part of the losing side, said there were good and bad aspects to the performance.

"We didn't play well enough to keep it close and we gave away a few soft tries as well that we shouldn't have," he said. "It was just a little bit of disorganisation. It's the first time we have been on the park against any opposition so a lot of those things we have to work on.

"Other than that, we had some good phases of play, a few times when we kept to our gameplan it was working and we scored some really good tries. So I am happy that we have got that concept down, but there are a few fundamentals we need to work on a little bit more."

Renegades captain Brian Whitfield was delighted with the way his side played.

"When you play that type of game, out in the loose, more of a sevens game, we have a really mobile backline," he said. "We are smaller and quicker and we are capable of putting up a lot of good points.

"We get in trouble when we get slowed down into a mauling game as we saw in the first ten minutes when they were working the ball down. When we get the ball out in the loose we do really good things with it."