Tribute Devon Two

Torrington 20

Salcombe started their league season with a hard fought draw against newly relegated Torrington who, following relegation in two successive seasons, came determined to stop the rot.

And indeed for the first 15 minutes they were camped in the Salcombe half and only desperate tacking from the Crabs kept them out. Salcombe’s defence was magnificent but inevitably under such pressure penalties crept in and eventually the visitors got their opening three points.

Salcombe bounced back more or less right from the restart when Torrington infringed on their 10-yard line and new signing Ed Palmer banged over a mighty kick to level the scores.

The game now be­came more even but Salcombe continued to give away a string of penalties, resulting in a yellow card for the player who finally exhausted the referee’s patience.

This helped the visitors to increase their pressure on the Crabs’ line and finally the dam broke with Torrington getting a converted try under the posts to make it 10-3 to the visitors.

Once again Salcombe showed their resilience by creating good field position deep in Tor­rington territory and a further penalty gave Palmer the chance to slot another kick to bring up a half time score of 10-6 to Tor­rington.

The start of the second half with Salcombe playing towards their favoured clubhouse end saw the Crabs deep inside the visitors’ half following some strong running by Oli Masters and the back row combination of Stuart Win­zer, James Palmer and Martyn Troupe.

Progress was halted only by a high tackle from Torrington and a yellow card for the visiting player. The Crabs took a quick tap penalty and Stuart Winzer went over after some nifty handling to get him the ball. Palmer converted to make it 13-10 to the Crabs.

This was quickly followed by another Sal­combe try when great line-out ball off the top from Sean Baker gave the backs some room to work in and a good run from Ed Palmer set up Mark Parnowski for a well-taken try. Palmer again converted to move the score on to 20-10 to the Crabs.

Thereafter Salcombe tired and with Torring­ton restored to 15 men they began to dominate again, scoring a converted try and a penalty to level the scores at the end.

Salcombe clearly missed having a match last week when the visitors cried off and a fair number of players were well short of match fitness.

This week Salcombe play Devonport High School Old Boys in a friendly at home, kicking off at 3pm.