Tavistock Legends 20

Tavistock Locals 20

A LARGE crowd assembled at Sandy Park for the annual Boxing Day memorial match at Tavistock Rugby Club.

This match pitted the older, wiser and — they claim — much better looking, Legends/exiles against the younger, fitter Locals.

The Legends side was made up of ex-players that had come from as far afield as Bristol, London and Birmingham whereas the locals had large complement of regular first team players.

The match started with the Legends dominating territory and possession.

A heavyweight front row of Marc Kerswill and Will Tomkins's was doing extensive damage in the scrum. The pressure eventually told and Alex Moy threw a dummy and sauntered under the posts for the first score of the game. This score was converted by Gareth Masons to make it 7-0 to the Legends.

As the game continued the Locals started to play themselves into the game. The impressive back row of Rory Oxborough, Lloyd James and Tom Friend started to dominate the breakdown and with Doug Lloyd and Duncan Law making yards in the centres it was only a matter of time before the scores were levelled.

Good support play led to first team fly half Richard West having an easy jog to the line; however, he was unable to convert his own score.

As the game wore on it was clear that some of the Legends players started to tire. In addition to this there main attacking weapon was taken away as the scrums became uncontested. As a result the Locals started to dominate the game and ran in well worked team tries from Chaz, Tom Friend (2) and Rory Oxborough.

The Locals led by 13 points and the Legends were struggling to string any phases of play together. Things were starting to look dire for the latter but then up stepped Ambrose Maguire who rolled back the years to score 13 unanswered points to tie the scores at 20-20.

This was a great day had by all and healthy donations were made by supporters to the Devon Air Ambulance.