Western Counties West Okehampton 35

St Ives 45

OKEHAMPTON RFC lost a long serving member of the club during last week when Bobby Burgoyne finally lost his battle with cancer. Both home and away games held a minute's silence in his memory before play started.

Bobby had played for the club some years ago and had latterly been a coach in the junior section of the club. He will be sadly missed and the all the club's thoughts are with his family.

The Okes visited St Ives in the far West of Cornwall on a dry day but with a strong breeze blowing in from the sea. It was definitely a game of two halves with Oke dominating the first, but St Ives coming back strongly in the second.

In the first half the play was end to end with both sides scoring tries. Okehampton fly half Gareth Espin opened the scoring in the second minute when he intercepted a pass and ran 90 metres to score under the post, with Tom Powell adding the conversion. St Ives pressed forward putting the visitors' defence under pressure but poor handling let them down.

Oke number eight Tom McGrattan cleared up field to set up a lineout near the half way line. The forwards won lineout ball and after good interpassing winger Rob Fishleigh crossed the line, but the try was not allowed as he had put a foot in touch.

Okehampton pushed St Ives backwards in the scrum and powered over the line but again the referee disallowed the try as it was held up.

Following a further scrum on the five metre line, number eight Tom McGrattan picked up and dived through the St Ives defenders to score near the posts, with Powell adding the extras to make the score 14-0. Okehampton continued to press forward and after a good passing movement centre Dean Andrews scored. Powell added the conversion to make the score 21-0.

St Ives then launched their best attack of the half and scored through number eight Neil Corin. Fly half Kelvin James converted to make the score 21-7 after 25 minutes.

Immediately following the restart St Ives knocked on. From the scrum Joey Bruce fed the ball to Gareth Espin. Matt Dennis ran an excellent line to take the pass from Espin and split the St Ives defence to score under the posts. Within two minutes Oke added more points when scrum half Bruce scored on the right. Tom Powell converted both tries to make the score 35-14. At this stage Okehampton looked in charge of proceedings, but St Ives pressed forward and had a try disallowed before scoring just on half-time through centre Ben Drew to make it 35-19.

St Ives came back strongly in the second half and denied the visitors the ball for the first 25 minutes. They pressed forward strongly, winning the ball from ruck and maul, and their handling improved a great deal over their first half performance. With Okehampton on the back foot the pressure paid off and they scored near the posts, to bring the score to 35-26.

Okehampton centre Tom Powell limped off injured and was replaced by Mark Gibbs.

St Ives, much sharper now, ran in three further tries in the second half without reply from Okehampton, though they missed the conversion kicks in the strengthening winds.

The final score of 45-35 to St Ives reflects their stronger performance in the second half. The Okes tried their best with the scraps of ball they could win but were unable to seriously trouble the St Ives defence in the second half.