RUSSELL Lawrance felt Penryn’s closely fought win against Okehampton on Saturday shows how far his young side have come on this season.

Andrew Seviour’s interception try gave Borough the lead for the first time with eight minutes of normal time remaining and forced the Okes had to returning home with a losing bonus point, something Penryn have had to put up with on five separate occasions during the campaign.

On another day it would have been the visitors who would have won with Borough’s set pieces and passing game proving inconsistent throughout the 80 minutes, with many onlookers left puzzled with how the home side had ended up winning.

This was not the view of Lawrance though with the club’s head coach who thought his side’s desire saw them through.

“I thought we deserved the victory,” Lawrance said.

“We stuck at it to the end and yes we didn’t play well in patches and didn’t manage the game well when things weren’t going our way, but it is about the whole 80 minutes and we worked hard for the win.

“Up until this point we’ve been glorious losers, going down by the odd score and getting plenty of points ourselves, so it is good to be on the other side of that.

Penryn made the first venture into the red zone in the opening couple of minutes, but a theme was set for the day as hooker Tony Pellow on his senior debut and his forward colleagues messed up a line-out from 5m out.

Away captain Tom Powell then missed a penalty from 35m out before the inside centre made amends with in the eighth minute to break the deadlock from the tee at closer range.

Borough managed to get back deep into Okes territory regularly, but were unable to break through the final line of defence despite some probing runs from Mitch Vague.

A source of dominance this season for Penryn has been their scrum, but they found Okes’ pack getting the bigger hits in and dominating in this area and with the line-outs not going well, the hosts were left wondering where points would come from.

Okes’ control in the scrum came to prominence in the 31st minute when they go their first try of the day as from ten metres out, a hard shove was exerted and ended with number eight Neil Parrott dotting down and Powell converting.

Not wanting to go into the break pointless, Penryn battled back into the red zone and forced a penalty in the ruck as Okes held onto the ball.

A quick tap was taken and Seviour broke the line before offloading to Adam Hughes who barged his way over by the posts, giving an easy conversion for Matt Horton.

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Adam Hughes gets past his tackler to score Penryn's first try. Picture: CORNISHPHOTOS

Early in the second half Borough kept the positivity up but Seviour was sin-binned in the 47th minute and not long after Okehampton got a second try when a poor home scrum was made the most of by scrum-half Joey Bruce who ran in from the halfway line.

A successful conversion made the gap ten points, but Borough looked up for the fight and kept asking questions of the visitors defence, although some of the passing went awry particularly between Vague and Horton.

It seemed a moment of individual brilliance would be needed for Penryn to get back into proceedings and it came on the hour mark from Josh Chambers, pictured below, who ran in from 60m out, shoving several tackles off en-route.

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Okehampton went back on the attack but found Borough’s defence desperate to keep them out, with the hosts putting in an excellent shift at the back and holding off their opponents.

Then Seviour’s moment came in the 72nd minute when after an away scrum, the centre spotted his chance to pounce on a loose pass and nailed the move on the halfway line before having enough pace and strength to battle over the line.

Deep into injury time, the Okes set up camp in Borough’s 22 and built many phases up before relief came for the hosts when referee Kevin William spotted a hand in the ruck and away them a penalty, which allowed them to clear away and seal four points.

PENRYN: 15 Creeden, 14 Chambers, 13 Vague, 12 Seviour, 11 Horton, 10 M Strick, 9 N Strick; 1 Burley, 2 Pellow, 3 Williams, 4 Ashwin, 5 Hughes, 6 Jones (c), 7 Hoban, 8 Randlesome.

REPS: Oldfield, P Hinchley, C Hinchley.

TRIES: Hughes (38), Chambers (60), Seviour (72).

CONS: Horton 3/3.

MAN-OF-THE-MATCH: Andrew Seviour.