Saturday,?March 24

Tribute Cornwall and Devon League

Bude 26

Torrington 5

BUDE made it five wins on the spin as they beat Torrington 26-5 in a niggly affair at Bencoolen Meadow, which saw both sides pick up two yellow cards.

The North Cornwall side hadn’t played for a fortnight due to their clash at Pirates Amateurs being called off and it showed in a disjointed performance against their visitors, who are embroiled in their own relegation battle.

Despite being frustrated for long spells, Bude took the lead inside the opening 15 minutes as full-back Matt Trewin made a break down the right-wing before being tackled. After the ball was quickly recycled, fly-half Olly Denford gave a dummy before finding the gap to score.

Bude continued to make plenty of handling errors as well as giving away penalties although their cause was helped by a visiting player being sent to the sin-bin for an illegal move at a ruck.

However Torrington failed to take advantage and found themselves two tried behind on the half hour mark as scrum-half Olly Mounce got the final touch to a classic driving maul from a lineout.

Bude weren’t at their best and they were made to pay by winger Jake Weeks. He took advantage of some slack home defending to run in from more than 15 metres and ensure that Torrington went into the half-time break just a converted try behind.

To make matters worse, home captain Joe Wilson was sin-binned by referee Nigel Gooding at the break for backchat after complaining that he had been stamped on.

Bude knew that they needed to wake up and although they improved slightly, they were never under any serious pressure as Torrington failed to make the most of their turn to play with an extra man.

The score stayed at 12-5 until the 69th minute when Bude were awarded a penalty try after the North Devon side were deemed to have illegally disrupted a five-yard scrum as the hosts looked to force their way over.

Denford had the simple task of slotting over the kick to make it 19-5.

Home winger Shaun Andrew was then forced to spend the final ten minutes in the sin-bin after getting into a scrap with a Torrington player, who was also given the same punishment.

The game was then all about whether Bude could score a fourth try for the bonus point and it was inside-centre Ed Hilliam-Cooke, who again delivered it.

After some excellent link play and phases from left to right, Hilliam-Cooke took the ball on the right-wing, stepped inside the winger before using his pace to beat the full-back and score his fourth try in two games. Denford again converted as Bude went into their Easter break with a comfortable win.

They are next in action on Saturday, April 7 when they travel to league leaders Wellington.

Player/coach, Angus Hodges, admitted he wasn’t too thrilled with the performance but was pleased with the five points.

He said: “All in all we managed to pick up a bonus point victory but there is a lot of work to be done. We’ve hardly been able to train and it’s showing as our skillset isn’t being executed right. But saying that, we got the win so it’s hard to be too critical.

“At half-time we talked about increasing the pace and quality of our play as although we knew that we were a better side than them, we allowed them to slow the game down, which didn’t suit us. The second-half wasn’t much better either as there was a lack of intensity and drive but we got the win which is the main thing so we’ll now get ready for Wellington in a couple of weeks’ time.”

Bude —

Trewin, Andrew, Watton, Hilliam-Cooke, R Hodges, Denford, Mounce; Bolt, Mead, Allin, Williams, Kingdon, A Hodges, T Fry, Wilson (captain)

Replacements: Cook, F Fry, Wright

Tries: Denford, Mounce, Penalty try, Hilliam-Cooke

Convs: Denford 3

Pens: N/A