A bad neck injury to Shaun Owens stopped the South Wales Scorpions’ match against Oxford.
Both sides agreed to end the game two minutes early, with the Scorpions going down 36-16 at home on July 5.
The half-back, who was only in his second game back after a ten week lay-off, went down awkwardly after a legitimate tackle.
The win broke Oxford’s six-match losing streak and the Scorpions may regret kicking two early penalties and not looking to put early tries on the board.
Paul Emanuelli put the first over but the second, from 40 metres out, was just wide.
It was Oxford who scored the first try, Andrew Hoggins went over from a scrum and Jimmy Rowland converted before adding an unconverted try of his own.
Marcus Brooker scored a third for Oxford before the Welsh team got a try back as Shaun Owens went over from dummy half for Emanuelli to convert.
Oxford replied four minutes later as Jack Briggs scored in the corner but the Scorpions got a confidence boost before the interval when Barrie Phillips forced his way over following a repeat set.
Emanuelli missed the conversion but made up for it with a 40-20 to give Scorpions a chance to level the scores before half-time.
From the tap restart the ball was thrown into touch and the chance wasted but Scorpions were still very much in the hunt.
They scored first in the second half when Chris Leyshon made a 50 metre break, leaving the Oxford defence for dead, but Emanuelli missed the kick to leave the Scorpions 18-16 down.
Oxford took control again when Glenn Osborn scored from short range just after the hour to extend Oxford’s lead to 22-16.
Former Scorpion Yannic Parker then made a 30 metre run down the wing to score a converted try that gave Oxford a 12-point lead, before adding a penalty to make the score 30-16.
Alex Thompson rubbed salt into the wounds to push the Scorpions further away from bonus point territory before the match game to halt with Owens’ injury
• Match report by Ian Golden