NORTH TAWTON 17 - TOPSHAM 38

?ON the face of it, the final result looks like another big loss for North Tawton and the negative minded would point out a 38 - 17 points margin is a heavy defeat, but anybody that turned up to watch the game would surely agree that this was a much better North Tawon performance than previous weeks.

The Tawts went in at half-time leading 17 - 14 and with real hope of overturning the form book.

An early try by Conner Maithes and the conversion by Dave Fewings gave the home side a much-needed lift and a seven point lead, a new look pack being very dominant and really giving Topsham plenty to think about.

The lead was short lived, Topsham giving a glimpse of what they are capable of when given the room to run their backs and a good run down the wing resulting in a score levelling try 7 - 7.

The Tawts with, it seems, new found confidence in their forwards, upped the tempo and pushed Topsham well back into their own 22 metres line.

There was a nice break from Matt Baker who always looks better with ball in hand and he went over for Tawton’s second try, but with a missed kick it was 12 - 7.

From the re-start the Tawton pack were happy to scrum all day, pushing the away side off the ball with some ease so much so that they walked the ball over the line and enabled scrum-half Jack Phare to drop on the ball for the Tawts third try but alas it was a missed kick, leaving it at 12 - 7.

Topsham wasted no time in their reply and were soon up the other end for another well-worked try and kick which made the half-time score 17 - 14.

A few changes to players from Topsham gave a different feel to the match and after a lot of pressure they got the next try of the match and went in front for the first time, albiet with the kick missed, score 17 - 19.

This being a dead rubber so to speak as it’s a Cup match that Tawton can’t qualify any further from and not a league fixture, the North Tawton coaches were keen to give everybody some game time and took every opportunity to rotate the players on the field which maybe led to a bit of the drop-off in the intensity needed to keep a good Topsham side working hard.

As it was, Topsham ran in three more tries to take their points tally to 38 and with North Tawton failing to add to the board final score it ended 17 - 38 in favour of Topsham.

As I hinted at the start of this report it’s not all loss, loss, this was so much a solid base to build on for the coming league campaign, some very welcome new faces in the side adding their weight to the forward section and on the wing some very quick legs.

Add the stalwarts of the side Messrs Si Quick, good in the game at No 10, Bill Sharp everywhere, Ryan Goss and Conner Matheis, always looking for work, Jack Phare solid at No 9, which means things can only get better results wise.

I have to finish by saying how good it was to see a certain Mr Young playing again, even if Youngers did have a 10-minute rest as directed by the ref, quote of the day: “They must have changed the rules since last I played”.

Chris Phare