Roseland frustrated by Aggie

Roseland 12 – St Agnes 24

Saturday afternoon brought a welcome return of league rugby following a fortnight of no rugby due to a Walk Over and a Bye week. Roseland welcomed St Agnes to Philleigh for what was hoping to be a close fought encounter.

The weather and the pitch were in near perfect conditions for flowing rugby. Aggie have had a reasonably successful start to their campaign and beat neighbours Newquay earlier in the season, a team Roseland lost to with that last play of the game.

Roseland kicked the game off by playing up the slope and against the slight breeze. For large parts of the first half Roseland were on the defensive and struggled to get any game time with ball in hand. St Agnes ticked the scoreboard over with two well taken drop goals. Roseland responded with a well taken penalty kick by fly half Matt Eddy. The Roseland defence stood firm but eventually Aggie broke the deadlock by scoring a try in the top right corner. The conversion was good. Aggie also kicked a penalty and scored a second, albeit unconverted, try in the first half. Roseland eventually managed to string some phases together in the last 5 minutes of the half and almost scored a try but some stout defence kept them at bay. The half time score was 21-3 to St Agnes.

The second half was almost a reversal of the first half with St Agnes strained of possession but Roseland not quite having the killer edge to grab any tries. Roseland were restricted to a further 3 penalties by Matt Eddy. The scores were then 21-12 and Roseland sniffed the chance of a bonus point at least but Aggie kicked a late penalty to stretch to 24-12 and forced Roseland to push for a try. To Roselands credit they dug deep and got to within touching distance of the Aggie line but some resilient defence and unfortunate handling errors kept them at bay.

The final score of 24-12 probably wasn’t the fairest reflection of the game as many would argue the Roseland pack dominated but the Aggie backs were just a bit more clinical.

Roseland travel west to St Just on Saturday, a ground of mixed results for Roseland over the years.