CINDERFORD 63pts PENRYN 0pts

IT is painful to report that Penryn came a very poor second in last week's South West 1 league game at Cinderford in the Forest of Dean. This area of Gloucestershire is a hotbed of rugby, and one suspects that even the sheep play rugby, although this has not yet been proved.

But the visitors came up against a very powerful combination of forwards and backs that combined superbly to overwhelm Penryn. It was an atrocious day weather-wise, with early morning snow turning to rain to give a mud-bath of a pitch. To cap matters, fog descended on the ground about an hour before kick off and there was a suggestion that the game should be postponed.

Borough were at least thankful that this was not carried through for it would have meant a fruitless, expensive journey and the need to come back for the re-arranged game.

The game was largely one way traffic, but Penryn, to their great credit, never let their heads drop and kept battling away, even producing a brief attacking rally towards half time. They were also handicapped by a welter of injuries during the game; lock Kevin Hughes had to leave the field half way through the first half with a shoulder injury, whilst flanker James Mann sustained a possible broken thumb and did not start the second half.

The loss of these two key forwards meant that scrum and lineout were severely disrupted, so that Borough's threes were denied a great deal of good possession. Even when they did manage to move forward the ball often arrived in a centre's hand at the same time as one of the Cinderford flankers. Towards the end hooker Richard Burns and tight head prop Brett Whitmill were both injured.

As Borough had used up all of their front row replacements the last eight minutes were played with uncontested scrums.

The dreadful weather conditions did not deter Cinderford. They scored tries in the second and tenth minutes and by half time were 25 points up with tries from flanker Ronnie Patea (2), wing Mark Hart, and No 8 Rob James with full back Danny Trigg adding a conversion and a penalty goal.

Full report in this week's issue.