A cruel spate of Injuries in the second half told the tale at Topsham, as Withycombe RFC went down to a 64-9 defeat at local rivals Topsham, who produced some ruthless rugby on the day.

Withies started well, putting pressure on the hosts from the start and drawing two early penalties, the second of which gave Vice-Captain Tom Cooke an opportunity to put the boys ahead with a shot at goal.

Now three points ahead, Withycombe continued to exert pressure on their hosts and managed to steal the ball from contact to work back up the field. The points tally doubled as the first quarter drew to a close, when Cooke slotted his second penalty against the wind to put the score at 6-0.

Topsham opened up their scoring shortly after, as some quick recycling of the ball saw them score under the posts. Topsham’s lack of discipline early in the game allowed Withy to capitalise well and on the half-hour mark, the opportunity of another penalty came along and to give Withycombe a 7-9 lead. Topsham struck back again with two breaks down the wing and two tries to put them 21-9 ahead at half-time.

With the second half underway, the Withy boys continued to put together some good rugby in both attack and defence. Unfortunately, the injury count started to rear its ugly head and with several quick problems being picked up in the high-impact game, Withy found themselves running out of options, even having to resort to uncontested scrums.

Despite a difficult situation against a strong Topsham outfit, Withy worked hard but were getting tired, leaving a few gaps for the home side to exploit with a number of tries down the wings.

Not the ideal result for Withycombe and certainly not the scoreline they boys deserved with the level of effort put in for almost an hour.

Withycombe have a week off next weekend and time for the injury count to hopefully reduce before the next game on 5th March, when they welcome Newquay Hornets to Raleigh Park for a 2:30pm kick-off.