Saturday, February 17

Tribute Cornwall and Devon League

Plymstock Albion Oaks 10

Bude 29

THREE second-half tries allowed Bude to cruise to a 29-10 victory at Plymstock Albion Oaks.

The North Cornwall side hadn’t played for a fortnight since their 27-9 victory over Plymouth Argaum and travelled without being able to do a lot of training due to the recent weather.

However it didn’t seem to matter as they stormed into a 5-0 lead inside the opening two minutes as lock Will Kingdon crashed over from close range after good work from a lineout.

The home side responded well and found themselves 10-7 up by the 20 minute mark thanks to a try from player/coach Callum Cload and a conversion and penalty from Teddy Richards.

Bude were playing against the elements in the first-half and went into the interval all square.

Some nice play from the backs, coupled with some dummies, saw outside-centre Angus Hodges out on the right-wing. Upon receiving the ball, he ran around the winger before kicking the ball over the top of the covering full-back to just get there first and make it 10-10.

Again Olly Denford missed the conversion but Bude were level.

Playing on a short pitch meant that the game was played at a terrific pace and it was the Seasiders who took control within the first ten minutes of the restart.

Excellent work involving the forwards allowed number-eight Joe Wilson to crash over from just a couple of metres and this time Denford added the extras.

At 17-10 down Plymstock started to provide more of a threat but couldn’t get through.

Bude increased their advantage on the hour when replacement James Comber took the ball of scrum-half John Wright 20-metres out and wormed his way inside before showing excellent strength to get to the line despite the attentions of two home defenders.

Bude’s fifth try didn’t take long to arrive and it came from inside-centre Ed?Hilliam-Cooke.

A good pass from stand-in fly-half Denford, coupled with a dummy run from Wilson allowed Hilliam-Cooke to dart through a gap and use his pace and strength to get to the line before the full-back could tackle him.

The final 15 minutes were pretty non-eventful as Bude ran down the clock to secure an excellent bonus-point victory ahead of this weekend’s rearranged trip to Lanner.

Player/coach, Angus Hodges, admitted that he was delighted with his side’s efforts, saying:?“Going into the game we were slightly nervous as to whether we’d turn up properly as we haven’t been able to do much training and we haven’t played alot. In the first-half we played up the hill and to go in at half-time 10-10 wasn’t too bad.

“That built up our confidence a bit and then in the second-half we played some decent rugby and scored some good tries. We defended reasonably well and although we gave away a few too many penalties as usual it was a successful result for us.

“It was a bit of a building block game and it was nice to win. Hopefully there’ll be no more postponements and the weather keeps improving so we can train and end the season with a good run of victories.”

Hodges is absent this weekend but is confident that Bude will return to North Cornwall with a victory from their trip to Lanner.

He said: “We managed to put a good score up against Lanner but it should be a good game between two fairly even sides. We’ll go down there with a pretty good team and I’m confident that we’ll continue the momentum and pick up the points.”

Bude —

Rakhshani, R Hodges, A Hodges, Hilliam-Cooke, Hammond, Denford, Mounce; Allan, Mead, Bolt, Kingdon, Williams, F Fry, T Fry, Wilson

Replacements: Comber, Wright, Andrew

Tries: Kingdom, A?Hodges, Wilson, Comber, Hilliam-Cooke

Convs: Denford 2

Pens: N/A