Match Preview

The Saints travel to Sidmouth for the final Western Counties game of 2016-2017 following their comprehensive 62-5 victory over Torquay Athletic at a sunny Tregorrick Park.

Last Saturdays result allowed Saints to leapfrog the Tics into 8th place while a victory at Sidmouth, will lift the Saints up one more league position to 7th. While relegation is now mathematically impossible, there can be no drop off in performance for coaches or players.

We now know that both Saints and Sinners play their Wadebridge Camels counterparts in County Cup Finals on Easter Monday. Both clubs can be justifiably proud of the way they have performed in their respective competitions and it is fantastic to see Mid-Cornwall sides in contention for this silverware.

While this is great to look forward to, we cannot allow our focus to drift from the league games still to play. They provide a valuable opportunity for players to force their way into both sides and should prevent the season meandering to a slow conclusion.

I was really pleased with how the lads kept their game discipline against Torquay. We had established a winning position by half time and there could have been a temptation to just see out the game without putting the effort in, or to throw the ball around without much thought.
Apart from a 10 minute period when we got scruffy and lost focus, we kept playing to our game plan and this paid dividends. We emphasise delivering our individual skills within a team structure and I felt that we did this well. Our final try was a great demonstration of this in action, a 60 metre effort started with forwards and backs carrying hard and elusively, great offloads to quick support runners pouring through and a perfectly timed pass which was well finished.

Our challenge is to continue to improve match-on-match and deliver better performances
A Saturday of unusual results saw Sidmouth lose at home 6-10 to bottom of the table Wellington. However we know to our cost, what a good team Welly can be on their day. Look deeper and you will notice that Sidmouth have run top of the table teams close all season. In addition they just went down to one league higher old friends Bideford, 31 - 32 in the Devon Cup. We underestimate them at our peril.

Our visit to Sidmouth coincides with their Ladies Day lunch and it should be a real festival atmosphere as Saints final away game has been designated as fancy dress. If you fancy a great day out why not come along to support the boys ... COYS !!!