David Butt memorial trophy

Torrington 25

North Tawton 17

FOR the second week in a row North Tawton went on their travels to play rugby this time to high flying Torrington, who after beating the visitors on their home turf must have been in a confident mood with home advantage in their favour.

With injuries to contend with the North Tawton team had a strange look about it taking to the field for this group A cup match and with all due respect to the players who turned out, the travelling faithful expected a worse scoreline.

The game started with a Torrington kick-off up the hill and both side trading some big kicks before settling down to some in patches good, quick rugby.

Tawton were holding their own and looked a lot more together than was hoped for but a well worked try down the wing by Torrington gave them the lead with a missed kick for 5-0.

Torrington then really but the hammer down and added three more tries plus one conversion to lead at half time by 22-0.

The scoreboard told no lies but North Tawton would have been pleased with some of their work in the first half, playing with passion and pride and showed every chance to score themselves in the second half.

It did not start to well for North Tawton as a penalty for not releasing gave Torrington another easy three points.

The visitors heads could have dropped at this point but its at great credit to the men in the black and amber that they decided to play and play they did.

They were helped when Torrington had their number four sent off for hands in the ruck. From the resulting play leading to Tawton’s first try with Matty Dennis scoring down the hill; the kick was missed to make it 5-25.

Good play by the visitors, lots of pressure and nifty handling skills led to another try by Matty Dennis. which was converted by Jack Phare for 12-25.

Torrington started to look a bit nervous.  From the restart Tawton attacked again but there was no time to make a winning comeback although a fine effort from Matt Baker made the final score 17-25, with the try scorer hitting the upright when trying to convert his own try,