Saturday, August 19

Pre-season friendly

Cornish All Blacks 7

Camborne 33

CORNISH?All Blacks’ head of rugby, Jimmy Tucker, admitted that his side were beaten ‘fair and square’ by Camborne in their penultimate pre-season friendly at Polson Bridge last Saturday.

The home side found themselves 26-0 down inside the opening half an hour, and although Sam Snell scored an excellent try to give them a sniff, Camborne added a fifth try in the second-half to pick up their first victory at Launceston for 20 years.

Despite both sides missing a number of key players, Tucker was disappointed with the performance, saying: “We were well beaten and it’s very frustrating.

“We went into the game confident that it would be an extremely close game but we’re simply not executing our skills well enough.

“Camborne caught us cold at the start of the game and beat us fair and square.

“We didn’t do the basics well and we weren’t motivated enough.

“We beat them last season at home and they had a few of their key players missing but they were still miles better than us on the day.

“People make rugby a lot more complicated than it is. It’s a sport where it’s about going forward as much as possible and we didn’t do that enough.”

Although Tucker was left visibly angry by the performance, he was impressed by one of last year’s Colts, Rory Cinnamond.

Tucker said: “Although we were below par, Rory Cinnamond played 50 minutes in the front row and he did really well which has given us some food for thought.

“We also scored a really good try from Sam Snell before half-time but we weren’t good enough and it hurts.”

Their first pre-season friendly, a 31-10 defeat at Newton Abbot, saw them play three 25 minute thirds to give 26 members of their squad a chance to impress. However, Saturday’s game was played as a standard 80-minute match with Tucker picking from a smaller pool of players.

Tucker said: “We played with a squad of 21 on Saturday as I wanted us to be stronger and get more minutes into some of the players.

“We still had a few players missing but so did Camborne so we had no excuses.”

Although it’s been a tough start to pre-season results wise, the All Blacks will be targeting a win on Saturday when the Wadebridge Camels make the relatively short trip up to Polson.

The Camels, who play in the Western Counties (West) Division, the league below the All Blacks, are under the tutelage of former Polson Bridge back-rower Mike Rawlings, and Tucker expects it to be a fiery encounter.

Tucker said:?“Wadebridge are going to come here and look to get stuck into us. It’s a massive game for them as they haven’t played us for a good number of years due to the difference in league status.

“I’m expecting it to be a very tough game and I’m expecting my players to man up, make sure we front up physically and do the basics well to give us a chance of winning.”

One man Wadebridge will know all about is former Bude favourite Dan Pearce, who has rejoined the Cornish All Blacks ahead of their South West 1 West opener at Keynsham in nine days’ time, and Tucker is delighted to have bagged his man, while there are further additions in the pipeline.

Tucker added:?“Dan is an excellent signing for us. He gives us some serious pace and can fit in on the wing or at full-back and is a good goalkicker too.”