Falmouth secured a 20-5 victory over Winscombe in a hotly contested game in the Tribute Western Counties West League on Saturday, writes Joseph Macey.

Both sides showed their competitive streaks with strong tackles being a feature of the day and a yellow card being show to each team.

Despite falling behind early on, tries from Matt Horton and Andrew Searle sealed a hard-fought win in wet and windy conditions.

Head Coach, Graham Whitmore, said: “The character and determination of the side was terrific throughout the game, I thought they had the upper hand in the first 15 minutes or so, they really came at us, but we defended heroically and slowly but surely the momentum turned and for the next hour I thought we controlled the game really well.

On the subject of the yellow card incident, Whitmore said: “It was only the one incident, one incident in eighty minutes of heated battle is pretty insignificant so there was no cause for concern, it was just a heated incident that the referee dealt with appropriately.”

In the first ten minutes The Eagles found themselves having to defend their line heavily, Winscombe opened the scoring for 5-0.

Falmouth stood up to the challenge, and they were patient and measured in their play, they took their chance when scrum-half Matt Horton was set up from a smart offload by Nick Carne. Justyn Irons added the extras to put them into the lead.

Irons added a penalty following a high tackle to extend the lead to 10-5 going into half time.

Falmouth went through the gears in the second half and worked hard to stay in front in a feisty encounter. A coming together between a Winscombe player and Alex Kindjarsky resulted in a yellow card each which highlighted the competitive nature of the match.

The team’s patient play paid off when Andrew Searle went over to all but seal an important victory against a resilient Winscombe side who were languishing at the foot of the table.

A late Irons penalty edged Falmouth closer to getting the bonus point, which would have added to a superb team performance, but they just missed out.

Falmouth will face Kingsbridge at home on Saturday (kick off 2.30pm).

Falmouth: A Searle, AJ Geach, A Tacchi, J Baglow, T Ward, L Barkwill, M Brewer, T Spiller, M Horton, K Rodda, A Harding, T Edmonds, A Kindjarsky, N Carne, L Humphreys, O Gay, S Firth, J Irons.