Corsham’s 60-5 win over Minety on Saturday took the home side up to second place in Dorset and Wilts Division 1 North and put them in with a real chance of the promotion playoff spot at the end of the season. The league’s form team, Corsham, have not lost a division match since November and were looking to inflict a 4th straight league defeat on Andy Ward’s Minety.
After a tight opening phase in which Minety exerted most of the pressure, missing a penalty, Corsham’s confident handling at pace pulled the makeshift Minety defence apart, moving the ball from one side to the other to allow Tim Minety to score the first point. Corsham’s second try once again stretched the villagers’ defence before winger Ryan Jones cleverly chipped over the covering back to run in and score beneath the posts.
The well drilled Corsham team added a third try in the 14th minute when a driving maul from 20 yards out saw Tim Minety grab his second try to take the lead to 17 points.
Minety upped their game and camped out on the Corsham line, but for the third game in a row, massive pressure brought no points for the visitors, second row Tom Windle coming closest to a try when his drive was held up over the line. With scrum half Duncan Simpson prompting Minety on, the villagers finally scored when hooker Tom Claxton found himself on the end of a fine move involving centre Jack Ward and second row Ben Scott.
Minety suffered a major setback when they lost young fly half Tom McAllister to a leg injury and had to reorganise hastily. The patched up village team were unable to prevent Harry Beazer adding a fourth try and Jacob Unwin scoring a 5th to bring the half to a close with Corsham 31-5 up.
The opening minutes of the second half saw Minety with the majority of possession but unable to gain any territorial advantage in the face of excellent Corsham tackling. Somewhat against the run of play, Corsham scored when winger Ewan Campbell touched down out wide on the left before a brace of tries in the 55th and 57th minute ended any chance of a Minety comeback, Unwin and Beazer scoring again.
Corsham were reduced to 14 men after a stamping offence but Minety lost Ward to a yellow card soon after.
With Minety pressing hard, Corsham broke away down the left wing, allowing Beazer to cross for his hat trick before Unwin broke out of his own 22 to run the length of the pitch for Corsham’s 10th try, to end the scoring at 60-5.
Coach Andy Ward praised his team’s efforts throughout the game but admitted that they were well beaten by a fitter, stronger and well drilled Corsham team. “We need to get out on the training pitches and get back to the form that saw us in 2nd place at the turn of the year. We were missing lots of players but it was a lack of match fitness and practice that told in the end.”
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