Bridgwater & Albion RFC 14, Camborne RFC 0 (14/09/13)

Match report by David Pomeroy

Bridgwater will be delighted with the result over Cornish rivals Camborne. Last season Camborne were the league runners up, but lost in the play offs so just missed out on promotion. With only two matches of the season played, Bridgwater sit atop the South West 1 West league table having taken 9 points out of a possible 10.

Today’s match was a low scoring game and Bridgwater will feel that that they should have scored the bonus point as they had most of the possession but that did not turn into huge quantities of opportunities.

Camborne attempted to open the scoring with a difficult long range penalty in the second minute of play, but the strong wind put paid to that and the ball came up short and wide.

Bridgwater then applied constant pressure with most of the play being in the Camborne half. At 13 minutes in, Bridgwater won their scrum inside the Camborne 22, got the ball out wide to Rob Allen who was taken down some 15 metres short of the line, a quick flick up to Arg Salarelis allowed him to beat the opposition over the line to score to the left of the posts. Stu Heal converted.

Bridgwater dominated for the remainder of the half and Camborne never really looked like scoring as the Bridgwater defence stayed strong.

Bridgwater started the second half well, however a difficult penalty in the second minute went wide and short of the posts.

There followed a nervous 15 minutes of play when Camborne were at their strongest. They did manage to cross Bridgwater’s line with the ball in hand, but the referee Anthony Woodthorpe, was well placed to judge the ball held up. Camborne failed to capitalise on this and never looked like scoring again.

Bridgwater’s second try came after 25 minutes when Ollie Dunn stole the ball during a maul and quickly escaped. He off-loaded to Joel Clark who ran 35m, evaded two Camborne defence and a tap-tackle to score under the posts. Heal easily converted for the extras.

[nggallery id=56]

Five minutes later, Clark was unlucky not to score again when an offload just outside the Camborne 22 from Nick Spellissy was wrongly (as shown on the video) adjudged to have been passed forwards much to the disgust of the home supporters.

Camborne never looked like scoring, but the tension remained as the referee played at least 14 minutes of stoppage time. Bridgwater defence remained solid however and took the victory by 14 points to 0.

Head Coach, Kevin Innalls said after the game “The boys played well and deserved that win. They applied great pressure throughout the match and forced Camborne into mistakes.”

Bridgwater will now travel to Cullompton next week for their first away match of the season where they will hope to continue their winning ways.

Scorers:
Bridgwater & Albion:
Tries: Saliarelis, Clark
Conversions: Heal (2)
Bridgwater’s starting XV: James Bryant, Matt Hastie, Lovejoy Chatawama, Nick Spellissy, Rob Thompson, Taylor Buller, Ollie Dunn, Dan Kemmish, Roger Drabble, Stu Heal, Joel Clark, Matt House, Rob Allen, Arg Saliarelis, Nick Francis.

Replacements (all used): George Sluman, Matt Northey, Garryn Basson

Referee: Anthony Woodthorpe (Hertfordshire Society)

Category: 1st XV News, Previews / Reports -XV