Newquay 39 – Roseland 15
Saturday afternoon Roseland travelled to Newquay Sports Centre to face third placed Newquay Hornets in the Tribute Cornwall One League.
Roseland arrived at Newquay after a week off following their postponed fixture against Bodmin at home due to adverse weather conditions. They also arrived with only 16 players, dragging veteran Shaun Eamer out of retirement, and this was to prove a factor as the game wore on.
Roseland kicked the game off playing away from the sports centre and against the worst of the cross wind. However despite this the started the game brightly with a strong early carry by second row Joe “Jojo” Davidson who burst through the defence and ate up the ground. The play eventually ended with a scrum to Roseland 5m out from the Newquay line. After a strong scrummage and a dive for the line by No8 Nathan Chapman the ball got fed wide to winger Christian Bembow who dotted down. Fly half Matt Eddy missed the difficult conversion.
For the next 10-15 minutes the game was fairly even. Midway through the half Roseland lost centre Matt Riorden to a nasty hand injury and were forced to reshuffle the side with veteran prop Dave “Gerbil” Martin coming into hooker and skipper Ant Thomas moving onto the flank as Will May moved into centre from flanker.
Newquay did pull a couple of scores back but it was the final 15 minutes of the half and first 5 of the second that Roseland let themselves down and let Newquay build a commanding lead.
At half time strong words were dished out and Roseland were determined to bounce back by having the advantage of the elements but as alluded to earlier the worst happened. Roseland conceded a soft “penalty” at the re-start and so conceded easy ground. Newquay built the phases and were held up short of the line in a maul, however the referee felt as those Roseland had somehow infringed and gave a penalty to Newquay, during the confusion Roseland vice captain Ed “Jellybean” Llewellyn found himself sin binned. Although Newquay snuck a couple of extra tries in during the sin bin period Roseland held out well and built pressure of their own.
Once back to a full compliment Roseland did cross out wide on the left as Bembow grabbed his second score. Eddy again failed with the conversion.
With time running out Roseland lost scrum half Tom “Dayer” Day to a knee injury and once again faced a reshuffle with flanker Will Rundle filling in at scrum half. It also meant Roseland had to finish the last 5-7 minutes with just 14 players.
However from the resultant scrum after the injury delay Roseland shunted the Newquay pack backwards for Chapman to dot down the try. Now they were chasing the elusive fourth try Chapman attempted a quick drop goal conversion…..there’s a reason forwards don’t kick.
Roseland piled on the pressure in the hunt for a fourth try and a well deserved point from the game however after a turn over and some quick hands, and questionable passes, Newquay raced down the right hand touchline to score another try and conversion to seal the game.
Roseland can now look to a home game versus fourth placed Veor on St Patrick’s Day at Philleigh. The kick off has been moved to 12:30 to allow for people to watch the England v Ireland game.