Saturday, January 5

Tribute Cornwall and Devon League

Torquay Athletic 15

BUDE fell to their first home defeat of the season on Saturday as Torquay Athletic ensured they did the double over the league leaders at Bencoolen Meadow, with a 15-7 victory.

Bude remain top by virtue of winning the most games but are now level on points with Penryn, while Honiton and Plymstock Albion Oaks are just one point and three points further back respectively.

The North Cornwall side had enjoyed a fortnight off following their 29-20 victory over Topsham, and played like it as the visitors deserved to win.

Player/coach Angus Hodges was able to call on the fit again Matt Williams at prop in place of the absent Simon Jeffery while the return of Steve Yates, Ed Hilliam-Cooke and Charlie Watton in the backs allowed Hodges to move to his favoured blindside-flanker. Steven Bromwich wasn’t in the squad altogether while Will Pharo was injured and Jack Horwell was away. Joel Troke was also out with concussion.

The visitors still have slim hopes of an immediate return to Western Counties rugby but it was Bude who started the brighter; dominating territory and possession but often made a mistake when well placed.

Their cause was helped on the quarter-hour mark as visiting second-row Jon Woodhead was sent to the sin-bin for slapping man-of-the-match Jason Bolt.

And within five minutes Bude made them pay. After some good forwards work down the right, the ball was switched across the field for onrushing full-back Olly Denford to step inside his opposite number Tom Drake and run in from 15 metres. Denford slotted an excellent conversion and Bude led 7-0.

Torquay had won 43-13 in the reverse fixture in September and weren’t about to go down quietly.

Soon after, a Torquay penalty was kicked to the corner to set up a driving maul from the resulting lineout. Miscommunication in the home defence allowed the maul to be set up and number eight Lewis Harben was driven over. The conversion was missed.

The rest of the half was a forgettable affair with the home side continually giving away possession by choosing to needlessly kick it.

The Devon side were the first to score in the second-half through a James Wood penalty which put them in front for the first time at 8-7.

Bude continued to struggle to get their usual style of rugby going and until the last ten minutes failed to string anything together apart from a penalty attempt by Denford which went just wide.

On 58 minutes, Hodges was sent to the sin-bin for a high tackle and just as he was about to come back on to give them a full allocation, his fellow flanker Finley Fry was also given a yellow card for a tap tackle.

Their woes were then summed up further as Wood, who was deputising at scrum-half, collected the ball at the base of a ruck and snuck his way through a gap from close-range.

He then converted the try to make it 15-7.

Knowing they now had to find at least a try and a three-pointer just to get a draw, Bude upped the tempo and started to run plenty of hard yards.

However, as had been the case for most of the day, they failed to make their passes stick and Torquay saw the game out to make the long trip to the South Devon coast 13 points behind Bude with a game in-hand.

And Hodges believed Torquay’s desperation to win shone through.

He said: “It was disappointing and a bit of a reality check for us. I just think that little bit of fire and passion was missing after a couple of weeks off.

“We had a reasonably poor training session on Thursday with low numbers, so went into the game almost underprepared which meant that our accuracy was off.

“A lot of passes didn’t go to hand, which meant we couldn’t build much pressure because we kept giving possession away, which meant we didn’t get a proper foothold in the game.

“If we want to stay at the top of the league we need to be committed as a team and as a club towards that goal.

“At the moment we’re doing well but we need to be more consistent week in week out. Unfortunately after the Christmas break we never really switched on and we need to find our form again.

“Torquay are far from the best team in this league but they wanted it more than us and took their chances.”

Bude are away at mid-table Lanner on Saturday and Hodges is demanding a significant improvement.

He said: “It’s a pretty horrible place to go. But hopefully we can have a couple of good training sessions this week, put in a good performance and put a lot of the wrongs from Saturday to right.”

Bude —

Denford, Sharp, Watton, Hilliam-Cooke, R Hodges, S Yates, Mounce; Williams, Bolt, Allin, Kingdon, Dunkin, A Hodges, F Fry, Wilson

Replacements: Mead, Saxton, Wright

Tries: Denford

Convs: Denford

Pens: N/A

Bude’s man-of-the-match: Jason Bolt