Illogan Park 11 – Roseland 13
On Saturday afternoon all the rugby talk was of the impending clash between England and Wales at Twickenham but their were far more pressing matters at hand before that trivial clash. The big game on Saturday was Roseland versus Illogan Park at Illogan.
Both sides knew this fixture was a chance for a rare victory after outings against the “Big 4”. Roseland started brightly with some solid carries from former skipper Andrew Stark and new Vice Captain Ed Llewellyn. There was also some promising defensive play from youngster Charlie Morris as well on a rare start in the XV.
Roseland opened the scoring with a penalty kick by fly half Matt Eddy. Illogan were on the attack when after some solid defence and a spilt ball in midfield was regathered by Roseland the ball was shipped wide to centre Christian Bembow who showed a good turn of pace, and strength, to round the defence before bumping off the full back to score an excellent try. Eddy converted and Roseland led 10-0.
Illogan themselves then got on the scoreboard with a penalty kick of their own after some sustained pressure in the Roseland 22.
Roseland at times were indebted to full back Andy Harris who was solid under the high ball in greasy conditions and showed an eye for a gap in attack, sadly he was forced off at half time with nasty finger injury.
On the stroke of half time Eddy missed a penalty kick but Roseland went in ahead 10-3.
The second half was a rather sluggish affair and never seemed to get going.
Illogan battled back and kicked an early penalty to eat into Roselands lead.
Roseland soon responded though with another penalty kicked by Eddy to lead 13-6.
Illogan did score a well deserved try but resilient defence forced the try scorer wide causing a difficult conversion, the conversion was missed and Roseland held a narrow 2 point lead.
Determined to close the game out Roseland woke up and built some sustained pressure. Unfortunately the final killer score never materialised despite several scrums on the Illogan line.
The Roseland forwards showed good composure in the final few minutes to close out the game.
Roseland scraped a 13-11 victory to take them into this weeks home fixture against St Agnes.
This week also sees Roseland host their Sponsors Day.