PAIGNTON 3 - CREDITON 34

THE trip to Paignton on Saturday, October 27 was always a potential banana skin for us as, despite their position in the league, they were still undefeated on their own patch this season and had run sides pretty close in most of their away games.

However, without being disrespectful to our hosts, we were seldom troubled and if we are totally honest, could have won by a much bigger margin.

Paignton opened the scoring in the second minute when we were caught offside and their fly-half Dave Siddall popped over an easy kick.

It started Paignton’s side of the scoreboard moving although for the remaining 78 minutes it would remain stuck on three.

Within five minutes, centre Mark Lee cancelled out the home lead with a penalty and by the time the next 20 minutes had passed, he added four more as the Paignton side infringed in various ways.

We were dominant at scrum time and continually had the Cherries on the back foot although to their credit, they defended strongly and kept us from scoring for the entire first half.

We were contributors to our own failings a few times when there were opportunities to score but the passes never came.

The second half saw us playing against the strong breeze but it made little difference to the pattern of the game as we continued to dominate.

At long last the first try came when another penalty was kicked to the corner 10 metres from the Paignton line.

The resulting catch and drive ended with lock Mark Nott being driven over, full-back Olly Down landed a difficult conversion.

Play was held up for the best part of 30 minutes due to an injury to the Paignton scrum-half Jack Taylor.

Fortunately, he was released from hospital later that evening and we wish him well for a speedy recovery.

The game restarted with just over 20 minutes remaining and it was not long before our lead was extended, this time the ball went through several pairs of hands and centre Jason Luff forced his way over.

The conversion attempt from Down struck the post. We continued to press for further scores and a blind side move off a ruck 15 metres out was well-finished in the corner by winger Andrew Smerdon, Down’s conversion found its’ mark.

Unfortunately, time ran out before we could manage the bonus point try.

A good all-round performance, defensively we gave Paignton no opportunities and as an attacking force we kept them on the back foot.

Could have scored more than three tries but five away games with four wins and a draw, 22 points from a possible 25, could we really have asked for more?

November will be a telling month as we start with a rejuvenated Saltash at home tomorrow, Saturday, November 3, and games with the Ashes are generally high scoring encounters producing on average more than 50 points per game!

After a week’s break, we travel to Sidmouth, currently heading the table two points ahead of us and then it will be the visit of St Austell, currently one place and one point behind us, an interesting trio of games to look forward to.

‘QUINS

Paignton Seconds arrived at Crediton with a strong side but had obviously not banked on our ‘Quins being that much stronger.

There was only one team in it and the score could have been much greater had we taken all our chances.

Nonetheless we ran out comfortable winners 47-0, Chris Hooper grabbed a hat-trick and there were tries from Tom Luxmoor, Chris Simpson, Jake Clarke and Andy Hawkes – Tom Ronchetti landed six conversions.

Rather disappointingly, we were forced to call off the Third team Merit Table game at Torrington due to a shortage of players.

This is the first occasion that this has happened for a few years and hopefully we won’t be in that situation again.

Paul Harris