In high-level sport you get punished for one mistake. Make five or six and you can be staring down the barrel of a chastening defeat.

Bermuda’s men’s rugby team paid a heavy price for a string of first-half errors at North Field last night as Cayman ran out 52-12 winners, with visiting coach Ed Gough admitting at the end of the game that his side had come to “put their foot on the throats” of their hosts from the first whistle.

And that’s exactly what happened with Cayman scoring their first points in the first minute of the game from the boot of excellent kicker Phil Jacobs after Bermuda were penalised for a high tackle.

With Bermuda’s restart failing to go the requisite ten yards, the men in pink continued to invite pressure, with a mix of handling errors and poor execution ensuring they were 17-0 down after 15 minutes.

Even a minor scuffle in the 22nd minute, after which the referee spoke to both captains, failed to provoke a response with Bermuda continuing to gift Cayman points, notably when they tried to pass the ball on their own try line only for visiting winger Tommy Kehoe to intercept and drop immediately to the floor to claim another five points.

But that is not to say there were zero positives, with Bermuda responding well after going 24-0 down in the 27th minute. Rory O’Kelly-Lynch, playing his last game for Bermuda before he moves to Singapore next week, showed great ball handling to pick up a bouncing pass and break the Cayman defence to score Bermuda’s first tryand ensure they went in at half time 24-7 behind.

The second half started the same way as the first with a quick Cayman try, which was followed by two more as the game became slower, with players from both sides suffering more cramps than a woman about to give birth.

But if there was one consolation, Bermuda scored arguably the best try of the game when good work by Jamie Baum and Hadleigh Tucker led to KJ Dill touching down and making the game 45-12.

With four minutes to go, Baum was handed a yellow card and Bermuda had 14 men on the pitch when Cayman scored their last try through Mike Luxton.

After the game, Bermuda coach Chris Naylor, who was deputising in the absence of Brian Archibald, reflected on his side’s poor start to the game.

“We were clearly the second-best team, Cayman started well and were really good,” Naylor said.

“Pressure makes players do some silly things. Our decision making was OK but execution was poor and we put ourselves in trouble at times with some poor kicks.

“Right off our very first play in midfield they came back at us and that was then compounded by kicks that don’t go ten yards from kick-offs, which are sort of coach killers.

“Of course those players aren’t meaning to make those mistakes, so it’s just pressure and hopefully the boys will learn from it.”

While Cayman’s forwards were dominant, particularly at the scrum, Bermuda’s lineout functioned well and there can be no doubting the heart and attitude on display.

“I was pretty happy with the commitment in defence but when you make so many mistakes, it’s going to hurt you on the scoreboard,” Naylor said.

“Our lineouts were good and there were some nice shapes when we had the ball in hand, but we just didn’t have the ball in hand enough.

“When we did have an attacking platform, we then knocked on and it was error strewn at times.”

While Naylor was trying to hide his disappointment with the start, Cayman counterpart Gough was thrilled with the way his team attacked the game.

“We gave the team a challenge in the changing rooms to put our foot on their throat,” he said.

“We wanted to be hugely physical in the first 15 minutes and we did just that. We got a bit tired after that first impact for 15 to 20 minutes but that is where you win your games.

“We didn't want to be loose. We know Bermuda want a loose game and they want to run it back at us and expose our back three, so we really wanted to make sure our set piece was right and our game plan wasn’t too open.

“If we were going to kick, we wanted to make sure we get the ball off the pitch and not give the Bermuda team a sniff of that open game, which we know they're very dangerous at.”

Bermuda captain Darren Richardson felt the inexperience of the Bermuda team was a huge factor in their performance.

“Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face and we got punched in the face early,” Richardson said.

“Then with such a green team in certain positions, our early decision-making went against us and the greenness of our team showed.

“We’re missing a few boys that weren’t available for this game that were available for the last game down in Guyana and they proved to be a bigger miss than we’d hoped.”