PENZANCE 25 - NORTH TAWTON 10

DESPITE the heavy rain in the South West, a pitch inspection on the main pitch declared it fit to play, so the fit and available to play set off on the trek to the home of the Pirates, some of us hardly daring to believe it was on with all the rain that was still coming down.

On arrival it was clear every effort had been made to get the game on and, it has to be said, the pitch held up fine and the away side had the chance to play in front of a larger than normal for this league partisan crowd of Cornish who love their rugby.

It’s an old one I know, but the score didn’t reflect the effort the side from North Tawton put in.

It was only in the last 10 minutes that tired bodies had to concede to what had been all game.

We saw a more powerful scrum, unable to get any clean ball off the back of the set pieces and the backs struggled to get any go forward the whole match.

That was not to say there was any lack of effort from North Tawton.

The home team went in front in the first five minutes with a well-worked try from a scrum and the signs looked bad for the visitors again with the injured players missing list growing from last week.

In no time at all, with a penalty added to the converted try, the Pirates were 10 points up.

The Tawts re-grouped with their heads up and made huge efforts to stay in touch with what was now a growing in confidence home team.

It was with a great chip over the on coming defence line by the scrum-half, with a good line run by Matt Baker and a very well worked try for North Tawton, with a kick by Gary Sizmur, that we made it 10-7.

We thought that maybe the Tawts could build from there, but another powerful scrum from the home team lead to another try, the missed kick taking us to 15-7.

A penalty to the Tawts gave us a half-time score to make it 15-10.

Tawton were still very much in this match and needed to sort out the scrums, that way the visitors could plunder the Pirates.

Sadly for the men from Devon that was as good as it got for this game with the Pirates emptying their bench and seemingly getting stronger as a result.

They ran in two late tries, taking the final score to Penzance 25 and North Tawton 10. Next we are away to Liskeard.

Chris Phare