Saturday saw Westbury Rugby Club travel to Corsham with confidence high, as they took on Corsham 2nds.
After a good opening period, Westbury set up some strong attacking moves but were unsuccessful in scoring. Then Corsham struck back and after 13 minutes, opened their account with a well worked try following a scrum midfield. The backs outpaced Westbury’s defence to score close to the posts, adding a simple conversion.
Westbury managed to score with a long range penalty, kicked by Aaron Vaughan, after Corsham went off their feet at a ruck.
With Westbury struggling to deal with Corsham’s style of play, the home side capitalised with a try after the ball went loose following a lineout and Corsham managed to regain the ball to crash over the try line and score a converted try.
At this time Westbury were under the cosh and only stout defending kept the marauding Corsham backs from scoring. It was close to half time when Westbury managed to get into the home side’s 22 and were awarded a scrum.
Fired up, the forwards drove hard for the line, pushing the Corsham pack back. From just a few metres out, Westbury’s Ferran Adams gathered the ball to touch down over the try line. Stand-off, Vaughan, added the conversion. 14 – 10 at half time and lots for Westbury coach, Gareth “Foggy” Vaughan to think on.
The second half started with both sides looking to gain the advantage. Ten minutes into the half during a Westbury attack saw Aaron Vaughan prod the ball along the ground towards the Corsham in goal area. Westbury’s speedy winger, Jamie Dixon, outpaced everyone to ground the ball. Aaron “Ronnie” Vaughan again converted for Westbury to take the lead 14 – 17.
Halfway through the second half, Corsham levelled the score with a penalty after Westbury were caught offside.
Within the next 10 minutes Westbury started to gradually take control of the game with some entertaining interplay between forwards and backs. Special mention must go to hooker, Jack Bates, and centre, Dan Heatley, for their strong carrying of the ball deep into the home side’s territory to set up more attacks.
It was during one of these attacks that replacement, Reece Ball, picked the ball up from the base of a ruck to power over the try line. Once more, Vaughan added the conversion.
Jack Bates was involved in Westbury scoring their bonus point try after he again went storming into the Corsham half and offloaded the ball to replacement centre Sam McQueen, who jinked his way deeper into the half and offloaded to Jamie Dixon for the winger to use his pace to reach the try line. This was the final score of the match. Corsham 17 – Westbury 29.
It must be said that the second half was far better for the Westbury team when the game plan came together. Everyone raised their game, but special mention should go to the forwards, especially the front row of Chris Pearce, Jack Bates and Michael Tuck who refused to take a step backwards and dominated the Corsham front three.
Paul Couzens
