Sidmouth 2nd XV were 15-3 winners when they entertained Exmouth III, writes Bryn Thomas.

The visitors began brightly, but the home defence was good and, in their second attack, a penalty was awarded and the right boot of Jake Watts sent the kick between the posts.

Parity was restored 10 minutes later by a similar successful penalty. The visitors had clearly done their homework and stifled Sidmouth of the ball for long spells, by playing mainly through their large forwards. Exmouth were posing questions for their hosts to answer; the Sidmouth answers came loud and clear and were mostly correct.

The Sidmouth pack soaked up the pressure well and regularly forced Exmouth into errors. Unfortunately, those errors couldn’t always be capitalised on fully. The Sidmouth backline defended equally as physically as their forwards, but like the forwards couldn’t quite add the finishing touches when in possession. It was Sidmouth who scored next with scrum half Luke Bess crossing the whitewash.

The home side certainly had the better of the remainder of the first half and were unlucky on a couple of occasions from driving mauls.

Early in the second half a wonderfully executed driving maul from the Exmouth 22 was heading towards the try line at a rapid rate, only to be pulled down in the process of the ball being grounded; the referee had seen enough to convince him to award a penalty try.

The try will go down in the books as a penalty try, but if it were possible to do so should be awarded to the Sidmouth forwards as a unit; that was mauling at its finest from the men in green. As there is no need to add the conversion now following a penalty try, the score was worth a straight seven points. The try turned out to be the final score of the game.

The Sidmouth 2nds are back in action on Saturday (October 6) when they visit Topsham.