The Old Bath Road side omitted captain Andy Amor and made a total of seven changes to their side, and they were comprehensively outplayed by a big, powerful and well-drilled Barum side who finished their season with a bang.

And full back Joe Duffelen was brutally honest in his assessment. He conceded: “At the end of the day we came out and we just weren’t there. We thought that we could come down and throw it about a bit and, to be honest, our tackling wasn’t there, we weren’t there at the base of the ruck making it easy for our nine to get the ball out and, in the end, we were forced to defend for most of the game.

“They got the momentum in front of their big crowd of supporters and it’s a great shame to wrap-up the season this way. But we’ll take the positives and not put too much emphasis on this result because, at the end of the day, we are still the league champions.” Duffelen’s own game got off to a flying start when, after the opening three minutes of Barum pressure, the skipper intercepted home fly half Steve Terry’s pass out on his own 22 and scorched through the remaining home defence to touch down his long-range effort under the posts.

Fly half Harry Stapleton, making his only appearance of the season, added the conversion with ease and, for 23 minutes, the visitors clung to their slender 7-0 lead.

However, Rams were dealt a serious blow during that period as key flanker Azza Hopkins was taken to hospital with an ACL injury which could rule him out for up to four months.

And Barnstaple then got on the scoresheet as wing Sam Conway burst through for a score, before a Jordan Petherbridge penalty put them 8-7 to the good.

Rams’ Olly Poole was then sin-binned and Will Tops touched down early in the second half, with another Petherbridge penalty making it 18-7 after 45 minutes.

Luke Berry then touched down and further converted tries from Matt Ghol and Winston James completed Rams heaviest defeat of the season.

It was a disappointing end to such a successful season but at least it gave Rams a chance to look at a couple of their second team regulars including fly half Stapleton.

He admitted: “We’re very disappointed. We travelled a long way to get down here and we got turned over.

“There’s just no excuses from our point of view, we just didn’t front-up and they were more up for it.”