TEIGNMOUTH 28 VEOR 17

Following last week’s 49-14 thrashing of Totnes, Teignmouth had high hopes of moving back into the promotion frame as they welcomed promoted Cornish outfit Veor to Bitton Park. While the scoreline shows a reasonably comfortable victory, this was anything but, as a limited Veor side stuck to their game-plan to make life difficult for the Teigns. But the home side were indebted to their free-scoring winger, Will Sowden, who added four more tries to his already impressive tally for the season, not to mention fly-half Matt Moses who converted all four.
All looked rosy early-on, as Sowden picked up the ball on his own 22 and took advantage of gaps in the visitors’ defence to run in a try under the posts, allowing Moses to convert easily.
However, Teignmouth soon realised that this was unlikely to be a repeat of last week’s result; Veor, although lacking pace and organisation amongst the backs, had a strong, experienced pack who knew how to disrupt Teignmouth’s own forwards, thus making regular possession difficult for the hosts.
So it was that the Teigns’ scoring opportunities were limited in the first half, although the Sowden/Moses combination doubled Teignmouth’s lead before Lee Candy popped over a penalty to make the half-time score 14-3.
The home supporters have become used to displays of running and passing by their side’s talented backs, and so were less than satisfied with the rather messy fare on offer, and they weren’t to see any improvement in the second half. Although Sowden and Moses reproduced their first half heroics, Veor themselves came into the game more, as first Jason Williams picked up a try which candy was able to convert, and then the referee awarded the visitors a penalty try as he lost patience with Teignmouth’s illegal attempts to keep the visitors at bay.
It is a measure of the progress that Teignmouth are making at the moment that a bonus-point win, the third in succession, brought such negative comments from the home fans in the club house after the game. Nevertheless, news that Crediton had lost away to Tavistock, enabling the Teigns to move into 3rd place in the league, restored the optimistic atmosphere around the club. Teignmouth will have a chance in two weeks’ time to put further distance between themselves and Crediton as they travel to the mid-Devon side. In the meantime, there is a break from league action with a home cup game against Plymouth Barbarians this Saturday, KO 3pm.