The Lions bounced back from the defeat against Rosslyn Park with a comprehensive victory against a Luctonians side who narrowly missed out on promotion to National 1 last season.

The Lions opened the scoring early on when summer signing Arthur Allen continued his scoring form from last week by going over from the back of a driving maul. Not long afterwards the lead was doubled when the outstanding Allen scored his second having peeled away from another effective driving lineout.

The visitors reduced the deficit through a driving lineout of their own but the gap was restored when full-back Joe Brock fielded a kick and made an impressive linebreak before offloading out the back of the hand to James Stubbs. Following some good interplay between him and new prop Chris Romano, Jake Sterland scored in the corner.

The lead was extended when centre Charlie Davies crashed through two would-be tacklers before another neat backhanded offload found number 8 Joey Britton who crossed under the posts. It was the Nat 2 side who had the last say in the first half though when the ball was flung wide off an attacking lineout and their winger crossed in the far corner for a well worked score.

Despite a lot of changes, the Lions continued to attack with pace and width in the second period and it was one of those replacements, 18 year old Rafe Whiteat, on loan from Northampton Saints, who scored an excellent solo try when he broke from half way and shrugged off all the covering defenders to score in the corner.

The final score came with the last play of the game when centre Luke Veebel intercepted and found new centre Aaron Pope who put a clever kick through for another new signing, Jack Edwards, to show his speed as he outstripped the cover to retrieve the kick and touch down.

Head coach Gareth Collins commented: ''Pre-season games are not about the result but it was nice to bounce-back from last week and post a win, especially against as good a side as Luctonians. We have such a young and inexperienced group it was great to see us compete physically with a big and tough Lucs side. What was far more important though was the manner of our performance, which was much improved. We tidied up some bits in the two weeks since the Rosslyn game and both our attack and defence was much better today. We also used nearly players so it's really pleasing to give minutes to the whole squad and see the depth we have in the group.''