Salcombe First XV lose to OPM (19-33)

3rd Dec 2011

With regular no 10 Chris Drew away on his stag do and his two possible replacements injured plus several other players missing through injury, Salcombe fielded an odd looking back line last Saturday. Everyone did their best but the balance and understanding wasn't there allowing gaps to appear which the speedy OPM backs exploited to their full. Kicking duties fell to the young 2nd row Scott Lowry who after a couple of early misses in the swirling wind, found his range to convert two of Salcombe's three tries, one in particular a great kick from wide out.

The game went away from the Crabs from the start with OPM kicking a penalty immediately for an infringement in front of the posts and then from the resultant Salcombe kick off the visitors gathered and went over for an unconverted try wide out. They followed this up with another penalty and Salcombe were 11-0 down inside 10 minutes.

By this time the Crabs had experimented with three different options at no10 before settling for Rupert Bevan who, even if his passing had a touch of the serendipity about it, at least kicked well out of hand to give the Crabs' hard working forwards some field position. Winning a scrum on the 22 Salcombe put in a massive shove to win the ball cleanly and then drove some twenty yards before wheeling efficiently to allow Stuart Winzer the just reward of the try for his superb control of the ball at the back of the scrum. Inevitably brother Lewis was there to add his weight to the touchdown. Lowry then slotted the difficult conversion and the score was a more respectable 7-11 to OPM, a lead they increased just before half time with another penalty to make it 7-14 to the visitors.

Turning round with the wind and towards their favourite clubhouse end Salcombe may have relaxed but OPM didn't. In the first 10 minutes of the half they scored three unanswered tries, two converted, as they crashed through the Crabs' central defence and were cruising at 33-7 in the lead. Salcombe rallied and made some positional adjustments allowing Stuart Winzer his debut at centre. A long penalty kick to touch by Bevan set up the line out on the OPM 5 yard line and with visitors' hands in the subsequent ruck Salcombe took a tap penalty to give Winzer his second try of the match. The kick failed.

From the kick off Sean Baker safely gathered and the rest of the forwards joined in a good drive to the half way line. The ball was then delivered to Lewis Winzer who put in a lovely box kick which Darren Hopkins skilfully caught on the full and then evading the OPM full back raced to touch down under the posts for Lowry to convert and bring up the final score.

While not wanting to make this report sound to much like a Winzer family eulogy, it would not be fair not to mention Chris and Jim who both had storming games dominating their opposite front row, tackling and carrying well. Nick Trant too showed up well when he came on for veteran Martin Gloyns, called up an hour before kick off who showed that there is still plenty of life left in the old dog yet!

At the time of writing it is not certain whether the 1s will have a match next week but the 2s are due to play DHSOB 2s at home, KO 2.30.

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Salcombe First XV lose to OPM (19-33)