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Western Counties West

Penryn 8,

Kingsbridge managed to keep up their remarkable habit of winning in the dying moments of a game.

Visiting Penryn, not a happy hunting ground in the past, Kings managed to pull off a plucky 8-10 victory.

Traveling without four of their regulars in Hamilton, Cope, Chapman and Jones, Kings had to make substantial changes to the team that had  put away Torquay the previous week.

In came Rossister,  Barlow, Gibbens and Darke.  Barlow and Rossister lasted only 11 minutes before coming off with injuries, so there was yet more disruption to the visitors. To the credit of the whole squad, these setbacks just seem to unite and spur this team on.

The game was a scrappy affair, with both sides squandering scoring opportunities, although not helped by interesting handling of the breakdown by the referee.

Kingsbridge started well and applied early pressure through good sniping from Couch and strong running by Gibbens.  From open play Kings made an incisive break which saw George Banfield over in the corner for the first score. Treeby just failed with the conversion.

In a game where penalties seemed to be the order of the day, it was not too long before Penryn pulled the score line back to 3-5.

This galvanized the home team and a sustained period of pressure just before half-time led to another penalty which was quickly taken, leading to a home team try. This wasn't converted but still meant they took an 8-5 lead into the break.

The second half continued as the first, without either team having any sustained periods of dominance.

Finally, with time running out, Kingsbridge started to apply real pressure. Their line-out, which through Darke and Woodland had worked well all afternoon, was dominating and though the driving mauls were not delivering points, they were pressuring Penryn into a series of desperate measures trying to stop an energized Kings. 

Finally the home team cracked, giving away yet another penalty,  Couch taking a quick tap and managing to get his pass away for Newman to crash over. The conversion was missed, leading to a tricky last three minutes for Kings to hold out as Penryn threw everything at the visitors. Once again the Kings defence, which had been solid all afternoon, with Dan Barlow to the fore, held out.

Kingsbridge A XV were left high and dry without a game last weekend after being let down by two sets of opponents. Tamar Saracens were due to be the original visitors to High House, but pulled out on Monday only to be followed by local rivals Ivybridge, who had agreed to the match on Thursday evening and then  pulled out on Friday evening.  

 This Saturday sees fifth in the table Kingsbridge entertain third-placed Truro in the WCW league at High House. Kingsbridge currently have 74 points from 19 matches played while the visitors sit on 80 points having played three games more.

The match has been very kindly sponsored by Tally Ho Coaches and has a 2.30pm kick-off.

Kingsbridge A XV make the long journey to Barnstaple in the Merit Table while the colts will travel to Exeter in the second leg of the Devon Colts Cup semi-final, where they will hope to claw back a 3-10 deficit from the first leg at High House last weekend.