Truro 17, Falmouth 22

Falmouth opened their Western Counties West season with a hard fought away win over local rivals Truro RFC on Saturday, writes Joseph Macey.

Tries from Matt Poole, Mike Austin and Matt Horton with a try and a drop goal ensured Falmouth would have the bragging rights.

Head Coach Graham Whitmore said: “We’ve had two valuable pre season games against Canton and Pirate Amateurs, the Pirate Ams game was really relevant to us and that put us in a space that gave us confidence going into the game, we looked very threatening in what we did and that is a reflection of what we have done during pre season.

"We have got to work very hard to get what we want out of games, we are just asking for the players to show that over the next few weeks.

Falmouth Packet:

“When Matt Horton had put us 22-5 ahead with ten minutes to go we felt the game was almost safe. It was disappointing that we let those two tries in at the end, more from the fact that we let them get a bonus point but also that we feel a little bit disappointed that we didn’t get the bonus point ourselves.

“Mike Austin is a quality player and had a really good game, he got player of the season for us last year and was also the top try scorer for us last season. As a 17-year-old he is a phenomenal talent and he brought rave applause and everybody agrees that he was the deciding factor in the game.”

Falmouth were under siege in the opening ten minutes but as the game settled down The Eagles began to pick their way through Truro’s defence and the score could’ve been more had it not been for some last ditch tackling.

Truro got two late tries to bring the score to 22-17 but it was too late to mount a serious comeback.

Tom Spiller, who had his first game as club captain on Saturday, said: “There was plenty of positives, it is nice to get the win but the game could have changed in the first ten minutes as we were under pressure from the start but the boys stuck it out really well.

Falmouth Packet:

"We made some errors in the second half that we need to work on but plenty of positives to take from this game.

“It was just our discipline a little bit, we realised that Truro were basing their attacks around our mistakes in our half where we kept giving away penalties, we had to basically knuckle down and be a bit wiser.

"There is lots of positives from today and we will be looking forward to next week.”

Packet Pick: Mike Austin

Falmouth RFC: Matt Horton, Lee Humphreys, Matt Poole, Tom Edmunds, Nick Carne, Callum Penry, Mike Austin, Ollie Church, Anthony Geach, Ashley Searle, Jon Baglow, Kieron Vinson, Hugo Page, Alex Kindjarsky, Tom Spiller (C)

Reps: Alex Tacchi, Tony Emmins, Seb Firth

  • Falmouth’s next game is at home on Saturday against Wadebridge Camels (kick-off 3pm).