NORTH TAWTON 25 EXETER ATHLETIC 31

TWO tries in the first in the first five minutes and the home supporters could be excused from thinking an easy win was on the cards.

However, with a referee who seemed to change his mind on the way he wanted the scrums working, and a good fight back by a much-changed Exeter Athletic, North Tawton had a win snatched from them.

The home team got off to a fantastic start and were 12-nil up, with tries from Luke Dennis and Simon Quick, plus the conversion from Gary Sizmur.

While it has to be said that the Athletic pack were a lot heavier, the Tawts pack were more than holding their own in some well-contested contests, both teams getting clean ball from the put in.

The referee, who was on an exchange visit and getting to grips with the Devon environment, suddenly decided that the Tawton front row was committing technical offences to gain an advantage.

This resulted in scrum penalty after scrum penalty for the rest of the match.

The home team was failing to understand quite what was wrong and how to correct it, this giving the Exeter side a good platform on which to build a comeback and subsequent win.

At this point I need to make the point that I clearly did not/do not understand the role of a referees assessor and their possible ability to influence the on-field referee.

Exeter got the score back to 12-12 and were really making a match of it, but the Tawts weren’t panicking and soon went back in front with the best try of the game, the second from Luke Dennis, the kick added by Gary Sizmur to make it 19-12.

Next North Tawton went further ahead with a penalty, 22-12.

Just before half-time, Athletic kept a tight converted try, getting us to 22-19 at the oranges.

North Tawton struck first in the second half, another three points from the boot of Gary Sizmur, taking it to 25-12.

The situation of the scrummaging resulted in Exeter seemingly being on the right side of the ref.

North Tawton struggled to get any clean ball.

Two push over tries for the away side as the match clocks ticked down resulted in the final score of 25-31.

It was a frustrating loss for North Tawton.

Chris Phare