Saturday, February 3

Tribute Cornwall and Devon League

Bude 27

Plymouth Argaum 9

FIVE tries before the hour mark gave Bude their first league victory in three games and their first win at Bencoolen Meadow since November.

After winning the toss and choosing to play into the wind in the opening 40, the home side found themselves 6-0 down after as many minutes thanks to two Jake Turfrey penalties.

Bude gradually got on top and after multiple pick and gos, prop Jason Bolt barged through to grab their first try.

It didn’t take long to extend their lead and it came from inside-centre Ed Hilliam-Cooke. The number 12 ran down the right-wing and broke a couple of tackles before stepping inside the full-back to run away to score.

Bude looked dangerous whenever they had the ball in-hand and added their third score before the break, after Turfrey added a third penalty.

A great break from outside-centre Matt Trewin allowed him to offload the ball to his midfield partner Hilliam-Cooke. Hilliam Cooke then stepped inside the winger before passing to right-winger Alex Rakhshani who brushed off the attention of the defender to score from close range.

Full-back Olly Denford kicked the conversion and Bude were 17-9 up at the break.

Any chance Argaum had of getting back into the game were pretty much gone inside the opening 15 minutes.

Hilliam-Cooke picked up a dropped Argaum ball to run in from 40 metres before a brilliant move involving many of the team, allowed Denford to run down down the left-hand touchline to score from 15 metres.

The rest of the game was pretty non-eventful as Bude closed out their first win of 2018.

Player/coach, Angus Hodges, was pretty pleased with the day’s work.

He said: “Before the game there was an air of tension as we’ve not been able to train how we’ve wanted to with the pitches being so wet.

“However, we showed some good strength of charachter and I was delighted to get the win.

“Even though we went behind we were never too worried as we chose to play against the wind and we knew that it’d be hard. We asked for three scores before half-time and we did it which was great and then we sealed the game pretty early on in the second-half.

“After that it wasn’t particularly good from us as we became too one-dimensional, but before that we played some rugby, so I’m happy.”

Bude —

Tries: Bolt, Hilliam-Cooke 2, Rakhshani, Denford

Convs: Denford

Pens: N/A