St Agnes 25 - Falmouth Eagles 31
Two penalty kicks in extra time from the nerveless Ethan Williams secured Falmouth victory in a unexpectedly tense and exciting CRFU Tribute Clubs Cup Round 1 match, at an overcast Enys Parc, writes James Instance.
The Eagles selected an experimental line up, with a number of players making their debut for the senior side backed up by a couple with many years’ experience. However, with Falmouth playing their rugby in a league higher than St Agnes and the hosts a few players short, a victory for the visitors was expected.
With new skipper Seb Firth choosing to play with the slope, the game began as expected - Falmouth enjoyed superiority in the scrum, dominated possession and benefitted from a number of penalties and an early yellow card for pulling back the scrum half at a ruck.
Ethan Williams with his first penalty opened a lead. St Agnes continued to concede penalties, yet the Eagles were unable to turn possession into points to add to the score.
There followed a classic ‘sucker punch’, from a scrum in their own half a crossfield run from the St Agnes outside centre outpaced the Falmouth midfield. Two quick passes and a pick up close to the line by Glenn Gibson gave Aggie the score and a seven point to three lead against the flow of play.
This was compounded with a penalty for the hosts, for Falmouth holding on to the ball, to give a ten point to three lead. Falmouth were stung into action and a penalty kick to the corner was followed by a catch and drive with Dom Fearn, so the first half ended with the hosts holding a surprising lead. They had visited the Falmouth half twice and scored both times.
From the visitors' perspective the second half couldn’t have started any worse, with an immediate try for St Agnes, a box kick being allowed to bounce, regathered and moved across to the wing and an increase to the lead to 15 points to eight.
The game couldn’t be said to flow, a significant number of handling errors and injuries disrupting the momentum. There were far too many high tackles and influential Falmouth prop Rohan Ewels was one of many who had to depart the field, with a nasty facial injury.
The high tackles lead to penalty kicks to both sides and the score moved to 18 points to 11 to Aggie, before Falmouth levelled the score with a try from the dynamic number 8, Fraser Lyne.
In a hectic end to normal time St Agnes pounced with a tackle turnover on Ethan Williams to take a 25-18 lead before losing another player to the sin bin for a high tackle and Ethan Pattison scoring and William’s converting to level the scores and take the match into extra time.
The hosts could sense an upset but in an extra time period fragmented by penalty offences, Ethan Willaims was the coolest head on the field, managing to take both his opportunities following high tackles on Falmouth players - his first kick coming two minutes into extra time and the critical score in the second period.
Falmouth move into the next round of a competition they have hopes of success in this year, but will need to be more clinical to see that happen.
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