Helston 53 – Roseland 5
On Easter Saturday Roseland travelled to Helston’s King George V playing fields to face Helston in the first fixture of their round robin cup competition which also features St Agnes.
A bare 15 players turned out for Roseland. Several roped in last minute and also various people playing out of position. Helston have become a very difficult team to beat at home this season having recruited well in both players and coaches. This was the 4th time the two teams had faced each other this year with Roseland winning the two fixtures at Philleigh and Helston successful in their home fixture so Roseland were always up against it. Roseland also had to cope with no coaches or supporters on the sideline.
Roseland kicked the game off playing with the wind. For the opening quarter the game was pretty even but Helston eventually started to break lose. Roseland lost rookie No8 Will May to a nasty ankle injury so spent about the final 20 minutes of first half playing with only 14 men. By half time despite valiant defence and a couple of strong driving mauls almost producing tries Roseland went in trailing 21-0.
14 man Roseland battled hard and tried to stay in the game. The mix ‘n’ match side that had been pulled together showed buckets of attitude and spirit. Every player that pulled the shirt on on Saturday gave 110%. The 7 man pack done especially well to keep the bigger Helston pack at bay during scrum time and regularly marched them back in the mauls. Roseland unfortunately lost skipper Andrew “Starky” Stark to a recurrence of a knee injury around the 50 minute mark and so were reduced to 13 men. Helston did sportingly lend Roseland two players so it become 15 a side again. Despite this and despite grabbing a consolation try from a driving maul towards the end Roseland eventually succumbed and conceded 4 more tries to lose the contest 53-5.
On Friday night Roseland are holding their annual Dinner and Dance.
On Saturday they are scheduled to host St Agnes at Philleigh in the next fixture of the cup round robin. 3pm kick off. Final home game of the 2016/17 season.