Two injuries, a yellow card and a heavy defeat – it was a bleak day indeed for Newport as they went down 48-5 at South Leicester.

The hosts, ridding high in National League Three Midlands, proved too strong for the Shropshire side – who were powerless to prevent their biggest defeat of the season.

Newport were not helped by the loss of influential captain Neil Weston after just 10 minutes, the result of a blow to the knee in a tackle.

South Leicester racked up 24 points in the first half and saw their stricken visitors suffer another blow early in the second half when Joe Carpenter had to go off after a blow to his lower back in a late tackle.

A Vernon Fredericks try at least got them on the scoreboard but any hopes of a fightback were gone when Morgan Sikanen was sin-binned for allegedly collapsing a maul close to the opposition line.

“We couldn’t live with their pace and power,” said team manager Gareth Davies.

“They’ve got some useful backs that they didn’t have last year and they are a good outfit.They are big up front and they blew us away, effectively.

“Sometimes in sport you have to say fair play to the opposition,” he added.

“We were poor but we also felt we didn’t get the rub of the green from the officials on a few occasions.”

Hereford recorded their best win of the season as they trounced bottom-of-the-table Manchester 60-8 at Wyeside.

The Wyesiders ran in nine tries to their opponents’ one to climb up into sixth place in the division.

Richard Turner and Charlie Loughman both scored two, with the other tries coming from Jake Smithers, Gareth Miles, Richard Preece, Ben Osbourne and Ceiron Griffiths.

James Watter landed six conversions and a penalty to add the extra 15 points and take Hereford’s impressive total to 60.