Craig Ratford came off after 20 minutes on Saturday with a pulled quad muscle.

Barking undone at Henley but injuries crop up again.

Director of rugby Nick Warren believes Barking came up against a classy outfit in their 65-7 defeat at Henley on Saturday.

Their plans were hit after scrum-half James Fouracre suffered an injury on Friday and failed a late fitness test, while skipper Craig Ratford went off with a pulled quad muscle 20 minutes into the match.

Barking started brightly but Warren knew they were up against a team who hadn’t lost at Dry Leas all season and believed their class shone through.

“They are a very strong outfit and the pitch suited the style of play they went with,” said Warren.

“It was a good opening 10 minutes for us, but they then started to capitalise on our errors and losing Craig meant we had to put Scott Shaw at fly-half, a position which he is not used to.”

Will Robinson started the scoring for the hosts with a sixth-minute penalty and they scored 10 tries in all.

David Clements touched down nine minutes later and the Hawks crossed the line three times in seven minutes through Martin Nutt, Robinson and Liam O’Neill to clinch the bonus point.

A further score from O’Neill and conversion from Robinson saw the home side go into the break with a 36-0 advantage and Rob Stapley got in on the act six minutes after the restart.

Stapley doubled his tally soon after, before Robinson completed his brace and Richard Briggs and James Winterbottom also went over.

Barking avoided a whitewash as replacement Steve Hihetah touched down, with Maxwell Dawe adding the conversion and there was some positive news for the development team as they won 38-17 against their Westcliff rivals.

“Westcliff have one of, if not the strongest second team in Essex and for our young lads to get a win shows the structure we have in place is working,” added Warren. “There were four 17-year-olds out there from Robert Clack and that can only bode well for the future of the club.”

Barking: Foster, Baffour-Awuah, Lowe, Shaw, Solanke-Caulker, Ratford, Cook, Reece, McFarlane, Hughes, Gleave, Fox, Kearsey, Nagle-Taylor, Peasnall. Replacements: Bloomberg, Ambrose, Bason-Street, Hihetah, Dawe.