North Tawton Legends XV 7

Exmouth 2nd XV 17

FOR this non-league, re-arranged fixture North Tawton fielded a team of experience mixed with youth against a side made of up Exmouth?s second team.

Exmouth took play straight into Tawton?s 22 metre area and pressed towards the line. The home scrum, half expecting to be out-muscled by the Exmouth pack, found they were well up to the challenge. Having driven a scrum and then turned over the ball, hooker Adrian Pierce put in an excellent clearance kick up to the Exmouth 22 metre line. Continuing pressure from Exmouth was negated by a number of infringements, and penalty kicking by North Tawton?s captain Joe Fewings kept play back up the field.

On 20 minutes a sweeping move by Exmouth out-flanked the Tawton defence, allowing right wing Phil Hills to score the first points. From the re-start the home side went on the offensive and the scrum showed good discipline to produce a confidence-boosting drive with second row pairing of Garry Dennis and new player Steve Baker working well together.

Exmouth continued to dominate territorially and Tawton had to tackle hard to keep the attackers out. Mark Shields at outside centre, in his first senior game for the club, was effective in this phase,working well with experienced inside centre Dave North.

The visitors pressurised the Tawton line until, from a 5-metre scrum, Exmouth?s Luke Kent scrambled over for a second unconverted try.

Early in the second half, a good cross-field move by Exmouth gave their front row forward Paul Flower the chance of a powerful run to the line to score the third try, converted by the fly-half Alan Pyne.

A substitution by North Tawton brought Tom Davis into the back row, moving Rob McBain to the wing and Ryan King was rested, having had a good game on the left wing.

North Tawton?s fly-half Phil Wale came more into the game, both in attack and defence. One of his breaks started a good move as the ball was transferred down the line to North, Shields and left wing Chris Martin.

Twenty minutes into the second half and Neil Davis replaced Adrian Pierce as hooker, to make a father/son pairing with Tom in the Tawton pack.

Exmouth were continuing to dominate and several of their good sweeping crossfield moves were stifled by Tawton?s resolute defence, key tackles being made by Dave North, Phil Wale and Rob McBain.

An excellent clearance kick by the fly-half took Tawton back up to Exmouth?s 22 metre line and this time they were able to press their advantage. A darting run by Wale led to a penalty close to the visitors? lines. A quick crash-ball pass to North gave him the chance to take out three players, a second penalty quickly taken and Tawton prop Danny Wonnacott shot over for the home side?s first score under the posts. Joe Fewings converted to bring the score to seven points for North Tawton and 17 for Exmouth.

Although the final minutes saw several attacking moves by both sides, the score remained unchanged.

This week there is another home game in the league against Plympton Victoria.