Nailsea & Backwell kept their Tribute Somerset Premier title hopes alive with a 54-33 win over Weston United on Saturday.

Before kick-off, former Ravens captain Tony Perfect delivered the match ball for the game after walking 105km from Worcestershire to West End Park to raise money for the Doddle Weir Foundation.

Perfect’s amazing effort has now raised over £3,200 for Motor Neurone Disease research, smashing his original target of £1,500 and there is still time to donate via https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/tony-perfect.

The feat inspired both sides as the crowd were treated to a high scoring contest with 13 excellent tries.

The hosts started quickly with Tom Crossman going over from a driving maul before he intercepted the ball from a Weston attack and shipped on to Joe Collins for the first of his double.

Nailsea added a third through the pace of Dom Gordon after slick handling in the backs with Jamie Elswood adding two conversions for a 19-0 lead.

Weston regrouped and started to keep the ball through multiple phases, crossing through Hayden Main and Chris Young with Archie Tilsley adding one of the conversions to make it 19-12.

Nailsea had to respond and captain Luke Sharp offloaded for Crossman’s second, which Elswood converted to make it 26-12 at half-time.

After the break, a penalty was awarded to Nailsea and Elswood stepped up for what appeared to be a routine kick to the corner.

But catching the Weston defence napping, he kicked in the other direction to Joe Collins in acres of space to go over unopposed.

If the game looked over at 33-12 then nobody told Weston as a try from an overthrown line-out by Wilf Bright was quickly followed by scores from Billy Kirk and full-back Ross Bennett, with Tilsley’s conversion levelling the game at 33-33.

The Ravens knew, to stand any chance of winning the league title, they had to win this game and the character of the side shone through.

Replacement Luke Caswell came on and smashed his way over for a try and when Mike Frohlich outpaced the tiring Weston defence the offload to man of the match Crossman rounded off his hat-trick.

Nick Badcock rounded off the scoring with Elswood adding the conversions.

As the news filtered through that Hornets had lost against Minehead, next week’s fixture is a winner-takes-all title decider between Nailsea and Hornets seconds at 3pm at the Nest.