Duchy League

St Austell Sinners 17

Launceston 2nds 26

LAUNCESTON’S Development squad continued their bid to be Duchy League champions with an away win against St Austell on Saturday.

The team travelled to their Duchy League opponents, after what had been another week of mixed weather, in the hope of putting their first defeat of the season the previous week at the hands of Camborne behind them.

It wasn’t going to be easy though as hopes of taking a strong squad to St Austell were hampered for various reasons, and the total players travelling was 12 — which included their very own player-manager Mike Haines a week after turning 50.

The conditions were good, cold but dry, and the hosts, as always, were ready for a good second team game of rugby.

The game started with St Austell pushing hard and camping out in the Launceston half but on the quarter hour Launceston captain Mark Knight went over the line for the first try of the day which was converted by Luck Simmons. St Austell came back strong and scored two tries with one converted making the score 12–7.

Launceston dug deep and with clever play by the backs, Harry Daw had a strong run to touch down just before the break — again converted by Simmons —making the score 12-14 at half time.

After a good half time team talk the game restarted, still being played in good sprit with some hard tackling from Josh Langton playing out of position at flanker, where he spent his Colt days. The ball was being moved around the backs with Harry and Ben Tharme linking well which led to a breakaway run by Tharme to touch down on 47 minutes and again Simmons on target to take the extra’s 12–21.

The game continued between the 22’s with neither side giving ground until the hour mark when the backs linked up again and off went Max Kelly to score out on the wing, this time unconverted.

St Austell never gave up and with four minutes to go, they ran in their third try to make the final score 17-26.

The one person not mentioned was the young referee Furgus, who controlled the game brilliantly and the Launceston club expressed their best wishes to him and success in the future within the game.