Falmouth 22, Crediton 22

The Eagles earned themselves a hard fought 22-22 draw at home against high flying Crediton in the Western Counties West League on Saturday, writes Joseph Macey.

Going into this game Crediton were top of the table and had been looking to make it five wins from five games but Falmouth put a halt to their perfect streak with a spirited team performance to deny them.

Tries from Matt Horton, Callum Penry, Mike Austin and Jon Baglow took Falmouth within touching distance of victory and they could’ve won it with the last kick of the game but the penalty kick was put just wide.

Head Coach, Graham Whitmore, said: “I think it’s a game that both coaches maybe thought they should have come away with more, we are disappointed we didn’t win and it was a game we felt we had till the last few minutes of the game and we just couldn’t hold on but it was a competitive game and probably a draw was a fair result in the end.

“We missed 26 tackles last week and 18 of those were in that area around the ruck and we had to plug those holes. The thing we were looking at to improve was the ability to chase our kicks, in Mike Austin we have one of the best box kicking scrum half’s in the league and we’ve got to make more of chases on our kicks because we haven’t been chasing with the effort needed, but the increase in effort and work rate was much better this week.”

Crediton had a lot of the territory in the opening stages and took the lead in the 10th minute after a sustained period of pressure. Falmouth responded quickly and looked to assert themselves in the game, they got their rewards and their first points following nice work out wide by Tommy Jobe to lay the ball off to Matt Horton to score.

The Eagles then went one better and put themselves into the lead when Mike Austin evaded a series of challenges to pass to Jon Baglow for his first try of the season.

Falmouth contained Crediton well for large parts of the game but went into the break level.

The Eagles came out with purpose in the second half and had a 22-17 lead after superb tries from Austin and Penry put them into pole position.

With minutes left on the clock Crediton found a way through to equalise but missed their resulting conversion to leave the score level.

There was last minute drama still as Mike Austin set his sights after Falmouth were awarded a penalty, the kick was narrowly wide but shouldn’t take the gloss away from an excellent performance from Falmouth.

Following his first try of the campaign, Jon Baglow, said: “I think we went out knowing that for 20 minutes in the first half last week we were below par and I think we had a bit of a point to prove.

“Crediton are always a hard team to play against so we really wanted to go out and make a point, we wanted to make sure we didn’t give them to much respect because they are top of the league and really put it to them and I think it paid off.”

Falmouth will be in action again on Saturday away to Saltash in the CRFU Tribute Cup.

Packet Pick: T. Simmons

Falmouth: O. Church, A. Bullock, A. Searle, J. Baglow, S. Somers, F. Dalton, T. Spiller, T. Simmons, M. Austin, K. Rodda, S. Firth, T. Edmonds, C. Penry, T. Job, M. Horton. Reps: A. Tacchi, A. Robinson, N. Carne.