Saturday, October 6

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Cornish All Blacks 33

THE Cornish All Blacks notched up their fifth victory from six games with a 33-21 victory over Teignmouth at Polson Bridge.

The All Blacks made four changes from their thrilling 40-33 victory at St Ives.

Hooker Levent Bulut was at a wedding and was replaced by Jordan Duke while prop Sam Snell started in place of Alex Bartlett.

George Bone was injured which meant that Torin Clarke moved to number eight and Lloyd Duke shifted back to openside-flanker.

Ed Dudden replaced Clarke in the second-row.

The final change saw the flying Dan Pearce replace the injured Reuben Edwards at full-back.

The home side didn’t get off to the best start. An early infringement gave Teignmouth a penalty in the first minute. Shortly after, Luke Pattison touched down for the visitors’ first try, which was converted by Tom Gosling.

The All Blacks were late out of the blocks but when they got going, they played well.

A spell of good play led to a converted try, scored for the side by Brandon Rowley from a short lineout with Glenn Coles making the conversion.

Play continued to be predominantly in Teignmouth’s half and the All Blacks’ second try was scored by Ryan Westren in the 22nd minute when he received an offload from Will Morton.

The third try came shortly after as a scrum was worked from one side to the other. Pearce made an incisive run to leave him on a two-on-one. He passed to Martin Kneebone who had the easiest of chances to score.

Coles’ attempt went left of the posts.

Both teams managed two more tries in the second-half, which was a much more mundane affair.

The All Blacks started well, but Teignmouth were given some lucky chances.

Kneebone scored his second and the team’s fourth try when he finished off another free-flowing move.

Teignmouth kept pushing for points, but each time they came close they were taken down by the Launceston defence although their second try was worth the wait.

A Launceston pass was intercepted by Teignmouth’s replacement prop forward, George Franklin, who ran almost the length of the pitch to go over. Gosling converted.

The All Blacks responded with another converted try, this time scored by Shaun Crawford after a quick tap-penalty involving Lloyd Duke and Coles.

Joe Vanstone made his debut off the bench in place of Kneebone.

In the last few minutes of the game, Teignmouth’s patience paid off. They kept battling at the line, and eventually prop Dayne Layton found a gap to score and ensure they lost by just 12 points.

The All Blacks’ mood was made even better by the news that previous leaders Okehampton had lost 18-16 at Newent, meaning they moved back to the top of the table ahead of next weekend’s trip to Bridgwater & Albion.

Joint head coach Ryan Westren, admitted that he was just pleased to get the five points despite it not being their best performance.

He said:?“I thought as a team we played pretty well. What stopped us from getting more points was our inability to hold the ball and a few bad passes but we played well besides a few individual errors. Without those we probably would have got 60 points.

“But the way we’ve held our shape was amongst the best we’ve had this season.

“At half-time we felt comfortable. Although Teignmouth had only won twice this season they hadn’t been properly rolled over by anyone so we knew the job wasn’t done. Whoever they play they seem to stay in touch.

“We left a few points out there but as a team we’ve got to be happy. There’s a lot of boys out there who finished the game who haven’t played much men’s rugby.

“It’s good exposure for the boys to this level of rugby. For some of them such as Alex Bartlett, Ed Dudden, Joe Vanstone, Sam Snell and Harry Lightfoot, it’s their first few appearances. It’ll be invaluable to them later on down the line. They now know what to expect as opposed to being thrown in at the deep end.

“Even people like Will (Morton), he’s never played at this level before so we’re only going to get better.”

Westren was pleased with the performances of Pearce and Coles.

He said:?“Pearcey is coming back into form like he was towards the start of the last season and I also thought Glenn had a very decent game. He had half a season last year and he’s showing the more games he plays, the more comfortable he is at this level.”

Cornish All Blacks —

Pearce, Morton, Westren, Crawford, Kneebone, Coles, Collings; Snell, J Duke, Bentham, Williams, Dudden, Rowley, L Duke (captain), Clarke

Replacements: Bartlett, Lightfoot, Vanstone

Tries: Rowley, Westren, Kneebone 2, Crawford

Convs: Coles 4

Pens: N/A

Cornish All Blacks’ man-of-the-match: Marc Williams