National League Three South West

Ivybridge 16

Cornish All Blacks 23

CORNISH All Blacks teed themselves up for the basement battle at Salisbury on Saturday with a brilliant 23-16 victory at high-flying Ivybridge.

The Bridge got away to a dream start – 13-0 up in the first 16 minutes – but only managed one more score in the rest of the game as the All Blacks’ pack took control to earn their first away victory for over 18 months.

The Cornish side crept ahead in the second-half and stayed there thanks to the boot of Fraser Honey.

Ivybridge found themselves outgunned up front, which hasn’t happened often this season, and without a platform to work from struggled to make an impact.

Billy Pinkus kicked the Bridge ahead after three minutes the converted a loop-round try by player-coach Lewis Paterson before adding a penalty.

Honey got Launceston on the board with a long-range kick then Sam Snell raced up the wing for a try.

A second Honey penalty reduced the deficit to just two points, only for Pinkus to kick his third in first-half added time to send Ivybridge in 16-11 up.

Honey cut the leeway with a penalty then put the All Blacks ahead with a drop-goal.

Penalties on 61 and 74 minutes were enough to clinch a third win of the season for the visitors who head to Wiltshire for a gigantic clash with Salisbury who are just one point ahead.

However, due to Lydney’s shock 9-8 win over Old Redcliffians, Launceston remain 11 points adrift of the Forest of Dean club who make the trip to Bournemouth on Saturday.

Reflecting on the game, Cornish All Blacks player/coach Ryan Westren was absolutely delighted.

Westren said: “It was a great way to start the New Year for us and put out a bit of a statement that we’re not going to give up and we’re going to fight tooth and nail to stay in this league.

“No-one except us believed that we would go to Ivybridge and win but that’s what we’ve done. We know that Saturday’s game is absolutely massive and if we don’t win then it’ll count for nothing.”

After many hammerings on the road this term including a humiliating 38-0 defeat at Cleve in December, many of expected the All Blacks to cave in when they found themselves 13-0 down.

However, Westren believes that the character showed by the players will stand them in good stead for the rest of the season and pointed to a moment in the game which turned things around.

Westren said: “We didn’t start off to well and it could easily have been a case of here we go again.

“However we seemed to regroup and our prop Andy Knight made a huge hit on one of their players and it seemed to spark something.

“After that we played really well. We tightened up our defence, played good solid rugby and worked our way into the match by working as hard we have all season and that’s something we need to continue with.

“Our front three of Knight, Fred Bulut and Digby Parsons won the battle up front while Marc Williams played the best he probably has for us in the second row. That gave us a platform and hopefully they can continue that now.”

Kiwi forward, Everard Reid who joined the club before Christmas was unavailable as were wingers Chris Morris and Harry Dawe.

As a result, young winger Reuben Edwards was given the chance to start and Westren was full of praise for his debut performance.

Westren continued: “We’ve been thinking about putting Reuben in for a number of weeks but for whatever reason he hasn’t been picked. But to be fair to him he defended really well. He’s quite small and although he didn’t get much chance to run with the ball he stood up to the physicality well. He’s got a bit of an X Factor about him so we were really pleased.”

Before the win at Ivybridge, the All Blacks had won just two games from 15, however one of them came at Polson Bridge against Salisbury and Westren is hopeful that they can make it a rare league double.

Westren said: “Saturday is a massive game and is a ten-point saving game for us. It’s also the chance for us to a double over a team, which is rare for a team in the position we’re in.

“Salisbury have a big pack like a lot of teams in our league but we need to go there, work as hard, stand up physically like we did last week and then hope that our backs can get some good ball to score some tries.”

Ivybridge

Try: Paterson

Con: B Pinkus

Pens: B Pinkus 3

Cornish All Blacks

Try: Snell;

Pens: Honey 5

Drop Goal: Honey