Saturday, September 22

Cornwall and Devon League

Bude 17

Lanner 0

BUDE returned to winning ways on Saturday as they defeated Lanner 17-0 in a bruising encounter at Bencoolen Meadow.

Angus Hodges’ side were comfortably defeated at Torquay Athletic last time out but tries from scrum-half Jonny Wright and Hodges himself — his third of the season — mean they have won three of their opening four games ahead of next week’s trip to winless Hayle.

Hodges was again forced into a number of changes across the pitch due to injuries, a wedding and Rory Mead going to university.

Mead’s place at hooker was taken by veteran Jason Bolt while Simon Jeffery was at a wedding and replaced by Matt Williams at prop.

Luke Dunkin made his first start of the season at number eight which meant that Hodges moved to inside-centre, which in turn saw Charlie Watton slot in at fly-half instead of the absent Steve Yates. Watton’s half-back partner was Jonny Wright, who came in for Olly Mounce.

With wind and rain throughout, the game struggled to ignite despite Bude dominating both possession and territory.

The first five minutes saw both teams struggle to adapt to the greasy conditions with plenty of knock-ons.

Bude decided to keep the ball in the forwards as much as possible, but had to wait until the 20th minute to take the lead.

Skipper Olly Denford slotted over a penalty from 30 metres to put them 3-0 up.

Not long after, Finley Fry had to go off injured and was replaced by Tully Innes, who went on to pick up the man-of-the-match award.

The pattern continued for the second quarter of the half although Lanner had a couple of rare forays into the Bude half but ultimately they came to nothing.

The home side’s dominance was finally rewarded right on half-time.

After continued pressure, Wright picked the ball up at the base of a ruck and stretched over from inches out.

Denford converted and Bude had a 10-0 advantage.

It was more of the same after the break as Lanner spent plenty of time defending although they started to look more dangerous.

Bude had a couple of chances including a five-metre lineout which wasn’t utilised.

The game continued to drift along until five minutes before time Bude all but confirmed victory.

Wright took a quick tap-penalty and passed to Hodges some ten metres out.

As the defence started to drift across in anticipation of Hodges spreading it out to the backs, Hodges dummy passed before running through the gap and handing off a couple of players to dot down close to the posts.

Denford converted.

The game ended in horrible circumstances as one of their players was sent to hospital following a clash of heads with Tremaine Fry, which meant the game ended a couple of minutes early.

Hodges admitted that the conditions meant playing good rugby was impossible.

He said: “We had to adapt and keep it close. In conditions like that, we thought that if we could keep the ball, build the pressure and keep the momentum up the scores would come.

“We kept it short and simple and did lots of hard running which set the tone for the whole match. Unfortunately that led to us being one dimensional, which made it easy to defend. However, we kept the ball better than they did throughout the whole 80, but struggled to finish off the chances and to be fair, they defended well.”

Despite their failure to score more points, Hodges is encouraged by what he’s seen after four games.

He said: “There was more that we could have done but what I am enjoying from each game so far is how as a team we’re adapting to each game and how we’re changing our gameplan and style to the opposition. Yes we had opportunities to score more but 17-0 isn’t a horrible score and we’re happy that we’ve kept up our undefeated home record.”

Hodges was especially pleased with the impact made off the bench and the returning Wright.

He said: “It was nice to have Jonny back at nine, he was hungry and lively, which was good.

“Tully came off the bench after about half-an-hour and got man-of-the-match. He carried really hard and made a big impact, as did Ben Hancock when he came on.”

The North Cornwall club make the long trip down to Memorial Park to take on Hayle on Saturday and Hodges believes conditions should suit them.

He said: “Their pitch is nice and open which will hopefully help us play a bit more expansively. It’s a good opportunity for us to see a whole 15 performance.

“I’m pretty excited for it, we want to have a good week of training, see where we’re at and then see what type of performance we can put together.”

Bude —

Denford (captain), R Hodges, Sharp, A?Hodges, Horwell, Watton, Wright; Allin, Bolt, Williams, Kingdon, Troke, F Fry, T Fry, Dunkin

Replacements:?Innes, Dicker, Hancock

Tries:?Wright, A Hodges

Convs:?Denford 2

Pens: Denford

Bude’s man-of-the-match:?Tully Innes