Devon one

South Molton 32

North Tawton 5

SOUTH Molton chose to play uphill to start and ran in an early try out wide on the left, which meant the conversion fell well short.

North Tawton worked their way back into South Molton's territory, showing good aggression and taking the match to the opposition. In a closely contested period almost inevitably there was a flare up as Molton came offside in a maul, resulting in a yellow card being shown to a player from each side.

With the home side putting on the pressure North Tawton were penalised and conceded an extra 10 metres leading to a South Molton line-out well into Tawton's territory. The throw in was well claimed by Tawton's Rob McBain and a good break out down the right wing by hooker Alfie May relieved the pressure. The relief was only temporary as South Molton responded with a good run from centre Luke Doyle who drew the Tawton defence and got through for a try. The conversion was pulled wide leaving the score at 10-0 and, despite a chance for Tawton from a long distance penalty kick, that's how the half ended.

In the second period the bigger South Molton pack started to dominate and at an early line-out close to Tawton's line they drove through the disrupted defence for their captain Dan Smith to touch down to make it 15-0 to South Molton. After this the game opened up a bit with both sides trying to play running rugby under difficult conditions. Tawton's three-quarters struggled more than South Molton and handling errors hampered their efforts.

South Molton scored again from a maul and the next try came from a similar situation over to the right as the South Molton scrum half juggled the ball off the back of a maul and broke back inside to go through for his side's fifth try.

With North Tawton's scrum uncharacteristi-cally being pushed off the ball, South Molton's dominance led to another try and this time the conversion was good and pushed the score out to 32-0.

Finally North Tawton got some return for their endeavour as their fly half broke away down the left. As he disappeared over the hill full back Tom Chisholm was on hand to collect the final pass and go over for a consolation try.