Kicking off up the hill, Newmarket made a strong start and threatened the Bury line twice in the first few minutes. First Jack Watson and then Ben Jeacock took the ball over the whitewash only to be either held up or forced to knock forward by determined Bury defence. On both occasions the opportunities had been set up by the secure catching under the high ball of Ashley Reed at full-back. His counter-attacking was well-supported by the other backs and Nathan Buckle, in particular, proved difficult to stop.
With their scrum proving solid, the Newmarket forwards also went close to scoring and only some brave tackling by Bury's winger prevented first Dan Bristow and then Chris Le from getting to the try line. However, for all their territorial advantage, it was Newmarket who conceded the first points. Bury broke the Newmarket back line to take play into the home side's half and although they were stopped on the first occasion, several phases of play saw them break the line again to score near the posts and take a 7 point lead.
With the last play of the first half Newmarket reduced the arrears as Buckle took a quick tap penalty to cross for an unconverted try.
With the benefit of the slope Newmarket would have expected to have turned the screw on Bury in the second half, but inexplicably their scrum began to mis-fire. With Bury regularly gaining possession the home team had to defend hard with Gwilym Davies, Jack Felton, Toby Colletta and Watson making crucial tackles. However, in loose play the Newmarket forwards were difficult to stop with the front row of Ollie Sanusi-Bartlett, Dan Downing and Tom Wills controlling the driving mauls and forcing errors from the opposition. Following one such infringement Newmarket did get rare clean ball from the scrum allowing Le to pick up at No. 8 and brush off the defence to score. Buckle slotted the difficult conversion.
A few minutes later Newmarket should have extended the lead as Bristow was again held up under the posts, though at the cost of Bury conceding a penalty. Ethan Brown looked to have scored from the quick tap only for the referee to judge that a Bury hand had got underneath the ball.
Newmarket then went into their shell. Bury pressed them back into their own 22 and the home side opted to try and pick and drive away from their line when clearing kicks down the slope seemed a better option. The tactics did nearly pay dividends when Watson broke through the Bury lines and was only brought down 10 metres or so from the try line but lack of discipline then allowed the visitors to travel back the length of the pitch as Newmarket gave away penalty after penalty. It was a relief for the home side when the final whistle sounded with Bury pressing hard for a further score.
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