Tavistock RFC 2nd XV 25

Okehampton RFC 2nd XV 31

THE first half saw Tavistock dominate b ut they followed it with a disastrous second half where all their good work was undone.

Tavistock started briskly when a decisive cut into the Okehampton half, following good link play between blind side flanker John Mallon and number 8 Phil Maloney, provoked Okehampton into conceding a penalty. It was converted by Martin Creddicot.

A second penalty was won by Tavistock as Okehampton's defence struggled to combat the link-up play between the home side's forwards and backs with centres Ally Fry and Mark Ninnis blasting their way through the beleaguered Okehampton back line. Again the penalty was converted by Creddicot.

After this Tavistock went asleep and conceded a needless try after a breakaway from Okehampton, but responded with typical character following a maul and ruck and good handling from scrum half Richard Staniland for full back Ambrose McGuire to dart through for a try.

Tavistock went into half time with an 11-5 lead, but a poor start and nervous tackling led to a different second half as Okehampton ran in three tries in quick succession.

Despite Tavistock's defence crumbling and some awful handling errors which threatened to break the spirit of the home side, the front row of John Longden, Dave Welsh and Mat Moreton dominated. From a turnover scrum Tavistock got back into the game with Maloney linking well with the lively Adam James, to go over between the posts.

Again lax defence by Tavistock let the away team in following an overlap on the left. This seemed to galvanise them and the response was akin to the early stages of the game with forwards taking the ball on and quick hands in the backs.

Tavistock managed to battle their way within five metres of the away team's line, but were thwarted by dogged defence.

This was broken with ten minutes to go following another turnover in the scrum with replacement centre Adam Bridgewater crashing over.

But despite some openings the bad handling and miss-tackling carried on and Tavistock found the lead by Okehampton too much to overcome.