Devon two

North Tawton 6

Crediton seconds 13

ON a bitterly cold Friday night North Tawton  RFC welcomed their friends from Crediton seconds to Taw Meadow for a game of floodlit rugby, the very first game under the club’s newly installed lights.

A good sized crowd braved the cold to turn out on this well deserved night — NTRFC rightly proud of its new facilities.

Just before kick off at 7.30pm spectators were treated to a short, but spectacular firework display, before the referee blew her whistle to start the game.

The match started well enough for North Tawton, who applied most of the early pressure. A missed penalty kick by Dave Fewings seemed to wake Crediton up to the fact that while  the clubs might be a few leagues apart in real terms the home team were going to provide real competition.

Crediton opened the scoring with a try well worked by their powerful looking forwards. who released the backs to go over. With the conversion missed it was 5-0 to Crediton.

The away team incurred a yellow card and two penalties for the home side gave them a hard earned single point lead of 6-5. While most of the home fans are happy at this stage of the match it is clear that the Crediton dominance at scrum time was going to have its effect.

North Tawton struggled to get any clean ball being pushed back at almost every scrum against a well drilled pack, who used the advantage to run in two more tries before half time — both kicks were missed to make the half-time score  6-15 in Crediton’s favour.

North Tawton started the second half well, with some good little chips over the top by their number 9 and 10, giving the visitors something to think about.

In the scrum Crediton were repeatedly warned for pushing early but all this seemed to result in a reset and this was not helping North Tawton’s cause at all.  Crediton scored their only points of the second half with their fourth try to leave the final score of 6-20 to Crediton.

The final score probably flattered the away side, while North Tawton came close to getting a try of their own right at the death with some good handling skills and good attacking moves.

The game was played in most parts in good spirts on a great night for all involved.  Ryan Goss was North Tawton’s man of the match.