Saturday, October 12

Tribute Cornwall and Devon League

Bude 17

Paignton 19

THREE second-half penalties condemned Bude to a third defeat in four games as they lost 19-17 at home to Paignton on Saturday.

Despite missing a number of key players, a brace of tries from outside-centre Ed Hilliam-Cooke put the North Cornwall club 17-10 ahead at the turnaround, but full-back Mike Sandercock kept his nerve to ensure the Cherry and Whites returned to South Devon with four points.

Amongst those missing for Bude were player/coach Angus Hodges, former Launceston front-row Jason Bolt, lock Joel Troke and scrum-half Olly Mounce, who was forced to pull out in the warm-up with a back injury.

Mounce’s late withdrawal meant that winger Callum Bettington moved to nine with Jack Horwell getting a late call-up. Timmy Green was brought on to the bench.

On top of that, key man Joe Wilson was working and only arrived midway through the first-half.

Relegated Paignton arrived at Bencoolen Meadow on the back of a home win over leaders Truro and took the lead inside eight minutes.

After Bude were penalised for pushing too early at their own scrum on halfway, the visitors quickly broke which ended in them being awarded a penalty on the Bude 22.

They kicked to the left-hand corner and although the driving maul was stopped before the line, the ball was moved out wide for an easy score for winger Jordan Hodge. Full-back Mike Sandercock added the extras.

Bude responded quickly and got on the board with an Olly Denford penalty, which he struck over from 30 metres.

The next 15 minutes saw plenty of endeavour from both sides, but crucially it stayed at 7-3.

The introduction of Wilson at number eight added a different dimension to proceedings and he was the catalyst for Hilliam-Cooke’s first try.

Receiving the ball near halfway, Wilson, Dan Statton and Finley Fry managed to get to within ten metres of the line. After a quick ruck, possession was spread out left to Hilliam-Cooke who stepped inside a couple of tackles to make it 8-7. Denford slotted the extras for a 10-7 advantage.

Bude have a habit of giving away too many penalties and Sandercock slotted a simple penalty from close-range shortly after to make it all square.

But just as it looked like that would be the case at the interval, Hilliam-Cooke notched his second.

A penalty was kicked to the corner and from the resulting maul, the outside-centre decided to get involved and broke off the maul from close-range to score. Denford made it three kicks from three, seconds before the half-time whistle went.

The second-half saw Bude resort to their old habits of giving up easy ball and giving away penalties, which ultimately cost them the game.

They also failed to find touch on a couple of occasions with penalties.

Both sides rarely looked like scoring but in the end, three Sandercock penalties proved decisive, the last of which came five minutes before the final whistle.

Hodges admitted his side got what they deserved.

He said: “We knew that we had quite a task. Paignton got a really good result over Truro the week before.

“We expected to have to play well to win and also because of the result we got the week before [a 9-7 defeat at North Tawton] against a side we should have been confident against, we knew we had to put it right.

“But overall we didn’t play the type of rugby we managed to play in the first two games, and I think that was the difference. We just didn’t play as we could and ultimately, that was our downfall. There was a lack of structure throughout the 80 minutes. We just weren’t very threatening.”

Hodges was particularly disappointed with the second-half.

He said: “We were on the up at half-time, which makes the loss even worse. We were making some headway and our first try was really nice. If we played like that in the second-half we’d probably got some more points, but we didn’t really build on that. The boys got tired and gave lots of penalties away.

“It ended up like the old forward-orientated rugby, which just wasn’t good enough.

“That said, they didn’t really look like scoring, but it was just the penalties that lost it for us.”

Hodges is confident that his side will get back to winning ways on Saturday when they head to Penzance to tackle Pirates Amateurs.

He said: “We had a couple of good performances against them last year. If we play like we can then it should be a good day for us, but with the way the last couple have weeks have gone for us, we’ve struggled to do that.

“We’re going to have to have a good week of training and make sure we get out of this.”

Bude —

Denford (captain), R Hodges, Hilliam-Cooke, Watton, Horwell, Thomas, Bettington; Sobey, Keat, Allin, Kingdon, Williams, T Fry, F Fry, Statton.

Replacements: Wilson, Hockridge, Green.

Tries: Hilliam-Cooke 2

Convs: Denford 2.

Pens: Denford.

Bude’s man-of-the-match: Jake Keat.