Newquay Hornets RFC

With Penryn having their first team game cancelled at the weekend they decided to bring their first team squad instead of their second team to play Newquay on Tuesday evening. This was a little bit of shock for the management of the Hornets but they decided to honour the fixture anyway. As expected the visitors were a very well organised and dynamic outfit, however, the Hornets more than held their own in the early exchanges and especially at scrum time, which was very pleasing to see. Eventually the pressure did tell and the Borough scored a well executed try out wide after a trade mark bust through the middle from stalwart Andrew Seviour, he is a very powerful carrier and slipped a couple of tackles before releasing a well timed pass to Ollie Evans to score just wide of the posts. The conversion from Saberton made the score 7-0 to the Borough. Again the Hornets lads showed great spirit and some valuable possession themselves, making some dents in the visitors defence, but they were well organised and a couple of handling errors just thwarted the Hornets attack on occasions. Borough then scored two quickly well taken tries from Ollie Evans again and Mitch Vague on the short side, Saberton converted one of them for a 19-0 lead. Hornets to their credit rallied and never gave up on the chase and despite conceding two further tries from James Salisbury and Adam Hughes, one of which was converted by Saberton for a 31-0 lead, Hornets lads kept their heads up and worked hard for each.
The second half started with both sides making changes, the Borough side made 6-7 changes and the Hornets were able to get more ball and as a result, a few more sustained attacks. Eventually Hornets broke the visitors defence with a half break from Jacob Gratrix and a clever kick from Sam Crisp allowed Josh Mares to race clear and collect the kick to score wide on the right, the conversion was missed and Hornets were on the board at 31-5. Borough soon enjoyed their own little spell of pressure and what can only be described as loose tackling allowed Boroughs replacement winger to cross for a well taken try and Saberton again added the extras for 38-5 lead. Again though Hornets showed their intent and tenacity as a side and went back at the visitors and this time after a long stoppage for an injury to new signing Kyle Gratrix, his brother popped up at the right place to recover a fortuitous kick ahead and gathered it for another fine Hornets try, again the conversion from out wide was missed. So with 20 minutes to go and 38-10 down, Hornets went looking for more and to their credit pushed the visitors hard, but a couple of late tries from George Mitchell, against a tiring Hornets secured the victory for Penryn and they eventually won the game 52-10.
Coach Ian Morgan said “ Despite Penryn being far stronger than we had anticipated, the lads did themselves and the club proud out there, they never gave up and they showed it means something to them, which no coach can ever moan about. We have managed to use 31 players in the opening two games of pre season and all of them have thrown their hat in the ring. Hopefully next week we can look at 3-4 others and then comes to tough task of picking just 18 for the opening league game, it’s a head ache but a nice one to have.”