O's Blown Away by Withy First Half Heroics

Another bonus point win keeps Withycombe at the top of the fledgling Cornwall & Devon table, and the strength in depth at Withycombe is really starting to pay dividends: Andrei Toma, Aaron Conway, Adam Morris and Eugene Badenhorst all played for the second team this week after starring in last week's impressive 29-5 win against Bude, and debuts were given to Simon Tozer and Ben Clarke whie Tim Wills and Kevin Rodwell returned to the first team fold.

The Plymothians took the lead with a first-minute penalty but the rest of the half was all one-way traffic. Glenn Channing replied with two penalty goals of his own to make it 6-3 with quarter of an hour on the clock, before the tries started.

The breakthrough came when Withycombe turned defence into attack on 18 minutes. The home side clearly put a lot of eggs in the basket of their big pack;that is, until a driving maul from an OPM lineout in Withycombe territory was manhandled by Jon Axon. The gargantuan Withycombe second row waded into the set maul and emerged with the ball, setting in motion a move which released Sam Conway down the blindside. Just when it loked like Conway was caught with no support metres from the line, he released the ball, got to his feet and picked the ball up again to take two defenders over the line with him in his own show of strength.

OPM then suffered the sin binning of their second row and conceded 14 points while he was off the pitch. First Glenn Channing took advantage of a hole in the home defence to run in virtually untouched, then just a minute later John Parkin's keen eye spotted that no-one was home and his box kick on halfway turned into a jumbo chip-and-chase as he gathered and touched down with no-one within 15 metres of him.

Kevin Rodwell might have scored a similar try on the half hour were it not for the cruellest of bounces, but his inability to gather the ball gave OPM a scrum on their own five metre line. With the home scrum back to full strength, Withycombe turned the ball over and No. 8 Mike Richards went himself for yet another short-range five-pointer to secure the bonus point.

Right before halftime OPM caught the Withycombe defence napping as one of their big lumps picked right through the middle of a ruck and ran in what would turn out to be a consolation try to make the score at the interval 30-10.

In the second half he Plymothians' only hope was to rattle some green and black cages; whilst this produced four Withycombe sin bins, the vistors also ran in three more opportunistic tries whilst keeping their hosts out.

First to cross was debutant Ben Clarke who was on hand for an offload from Joe Parkin following a scrum taken against the head. The young openside showed the defence a clean pair of heels as he raced in from 40 metres out. Twin yellow cards for John Parkin and Jack Pugsley kept Withycombe on the back foot for 15 minutes, but the re-introduction of "club JP" brought about almost instant results; a quickly taken free kick opening the door for Danny Sansom to grab five points.

Sam Conway completed the scoring after a quickly taken lineout from Kevin Rodwell gave the Bicton youngster room to run. Conway's sashaying run bamboozled the OPM defenders and Channing kicked his fifth conversion to make it 51-10. Late yellow cards to John Parkin and new Aussie recruit Simon Tozer highlighted a disciplinary "work-on" for Wiithycombe, but the Clubhouse Corner faithful can't ask for much more than played 4, 20 points. Saturday sees unbeaten Crediton make the trip to Hulham Road for a derby game that has "Raleigh Park Classic" written all over it.

Jack Pugsley (YC), Sam Conway (2T), Danny Sansom (1T), Joe Parkin, Kevin Rodwell, Glenn Channing (1T, 5C, 2PG), John Parkin (1T, 2YC), David Wellbeloved, Liam Cullen, Phil Sluman, Jon Axon, Dave Sims, Danny Parry, Ben Clarke (1T), Mike Richards (1T). Reps: Max Cooke, Tim Wills, Simon Tozer (YC).