Saturday, September 7
Tribute South West Premier
Cornish All Blacks 12
LAUNCESTON’s first match back at Step Five ended in a comprehensive 54-12 defeat to an impressive Exeter University outfit at the Topsham Sports Ground.
The All Blacks arrived in Devon with a number of absentees through injury and unavailability but still gave first league starts to number eight Gary Gynn and centre Alfie Lang, while hooker Jordan Duke made his 100th first team appearance.
The hosts who are busy preparing for their BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport) Super Rugby opener at home to Bath on Wednesday, September 25, have an outstanding pool of players to choose from with their matchday 18 among 40 players all trying to get into their first team, and it showed as they put in an exhilarating performance full of pace and power to score eight tries.
Full-back Luke Mehson, who has turned out for Exeter Braves, the second team of Premiership side Exeter Chiefs, scored the first of three tries inside five minutes before winger Charlie Davies added a second on 19 minutes. Both were converted by Joe Elderkin.
To the CABs’ credit they continued to battle away and grabbed their first try of the campaign from last season’s top try scorer, Martin Kneebone.
A clearing kick was fielded by Dan Pearce in midfield who managed to offload to scrum-half Dom Mulberry as he was tackled.
Mulberry then passed to Ryan Westren before he did likewise to returning full-back Eddie McGinley, who gave the ball to winger Kneebone 20 metres out down the blindside, and he did the rest.
However Exeter notched twice before the interval as Mehson added his second before scrum-half Will Yarnell sniped his way through at a breakdown to score.
It took the university less than 20 minutes to score another two after the break, both coming from outside-centre Harry Tarling, again from a combination of missed tackles and quick, incisive moves.
Launceston grabbed their second try with 12 minutes to go with Westren at the heart of it.
From their own scrum 50 metres out, Gynn took the ball on five metres before he was tackled. However with the uni yet to set their defence, Westren picked up the ball and ran right over the top of the tackle to get to within five metres of the line before he was brought down. Following a couple of pick and gos, replacement prop Rory Cinnamond dotted the ball down from a few centimetres out.
This time Reuben Edwards slotted the conversion to make it 40-12.
With ten minutes to go, the visitors would have hoped to somehow score a further two tries to pick up a losing bonus point, but before they had chance to do that they conceded again as Mehson notched his hat-trick, which Elderkin added to once more with the boot.
The final try came with seven minutes to go as Elderkin found a gap to score, before slotting home his seventh conversion from eight attempts.
Player/coach Ryan Westren admits that Exeter were just too good.
He said: “To put it simply, they were just better than us in every area. They were a very impressive side.
“We could have done a few things better but they put us under the pump from minute one to 80. It’s not very often that’s the case, but there’s no disguising that.
“From our point of view it was a bit of an eye opener and when we look back at the end of the season, we need to make sure it was an anomaly.”
Exmouth are the visitors to Polson Bridge on Saturday (3pm), and Westren expects a different type of challenge against ‘the Cockles’ whose director of rugby is former Launceston centre Steve Perry.
“It’s our first game in front of our home crowd and in all honesty this will prove more where we’re at. We said last week that Exeter University are unique in this league but Exmouth will be a much different task.
“They’ve got a combative forward pack with some experienced heads, so that’s another challenge. We’ll be going from facing a side that were whipping it around at 100mph to a side which might take you on physically. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, so it might be a bit different but not necessarily easier.”
Westren expects to see a big reaction.
He said: “Some of our one-on-one tackling wasn’t great on Saturday but it was always going to be extremely tough. We need to put our own stamp on the game, something we learned from Saturday is that you have to find a way to get into your shape and patterns.
“We need to put what we’ve been doing throughout the summer and in training into practice. We know what we need to do but we need to do it when there’s another team trying to stop you.”
The likes of Chris Macdonald, Glenn Coles and Shaun Crawford should be available this week, but Westren is keeping his cards close to his chest.
He said: “I expect some of them to be back and available for selection, but it was no-one’s individual fault on Saturday. But we need to see a reaction this week in training, not just on Saturday, so hopefully it can happen.”
Cornish All Blacks —
McGinley, Pearce, Edwards, Lang, Kneebone, Westren, Mulberry; Bentham, J Duke, Thomas, Goldsmith, Clarke, Lightfoot, L Duke (captain), Gynn.
Replacements: Cinnamond, Bulut, Bottoms.
Tries: Kneebone, Cinnamond.
Convs: Edwards.
Pens: N/A.