CREDITON RFC COLTS XV 47-5 OKEHAMPTON

THE Colts kicked off the weekend on Friday night under the lights at the river pitch with another impressive performance, this time in a friendly against Okehampton.

We started strongly and went 7-0 up in the first five minutes when Jed Smith, who was outstanding all evening, spotted a gap behind a ruck and raced over. Ollie Harris converted.

Dominating possession and territory, it seemed only a matter of time before we would extend the lead but some strong defence from Okehampton kept us out.

It took until the half-hour mark for the lead to be extended, Monty Charteris scoring the try and Harris converting. Shortly after Joe Stanbury burrowed over but the visitors responded and we headed into the break 19-5 up.

Early in the second period, after pressure from the forwards, Hayden Vooght crashed over. Harris added the extras to make it 26-5.

Not long after, Vooght found himself at the back of another close range ruck and went over for his second, Harris again adding the conversion.

In plummeting temperatures, we kept the heat on the Oke defence and, on the front foot played the territory well.

Okehampton kept battling and making tackles but no-one could stop Ozzie Kent when he took the ball at pace and smashed his way to line. Harris nailed the kick and we were leading 40-5.

The final 10 minutes saw us continue to camp in the Okehampton ’22 and in almost a carbon copy of his previous efforts, Vooght crashed over for his hat-trick! Harris capped another decent return from the tee with the conversion for a 47-5 win.

Huge thanks to Okehampton for the game as sadly, for a number of reasons, friendly fixtures at Colts level seem to be hard to get.

Rob Avery-Wright, Chris Hooper, John Gurzynski and Jay Harris