Teignmouth 8 Withycombe 23

What looks like an easy victory for the visitors was anything but, as these two Devon rivals fought out yet another closely-contested match. Indeed, as the match entered injury time Withycombe held just a one-point advantage. At that stage, referee Mr Philpott discovered that he had a yellow card in his pocket, and decided to start using it, with disastrous results for the Teigns.
The last three games between these sides had seen two narrow victories for the Withys, and one for Teignmouth, and for most of the match it looked likely that one of the sides would at least be earning a losing bonus point.
Last season Teignmouth had some issues with discipline, and these seemed to raise their ugly head again as two penalties were conceded in the first ten minutes; Withycombe possess a very reliable kicker in fly-half Paddy Shaw, and the home side found themselves 6-0 down.
However, Withycombe were also attracting Mr Philpott’s attention, with the result that Will Luscombe reduced the arrears after 18 minutes.
Although the Teignmouth pack were struggling in the set pieces, they gradually started to assert a degree of control over the open play, but were unable to translate possession and territory into points, and so the teams turned round with the score 6-3 to the visitors.
With three-quarters of the match gone, the two sides had played 140 minutes this season without a try between them, and the likelyhood of this situation changing looked remote at that stage. Winger Will Sowden is unimpressed by such statistics, however, and popped up on his opposite wing to put the home side 8-6 up with just over a quarter of an hour to go.
The uneventful nature of matches between the two sides led most to believe that the home side would hang on for a narrow victory, but they reckoned without the fireworks of the final 10 minutes.
Teignmouth’s lack of discipline again proved decisive, and a succession of penalties eventually resulted in prop Paul Scott receiving a yellow card and Shaw converting an easy kick to put the visitors 9-8 up.
As Teignmouth fought hard to get the possession needed to launch their backs for a match-winning try, Jake Bury was deemed to have tackled without using his arms and received a yellow card for his troubles. Down to 13 men, the strain started to tell, and as yet another Teignmouth scrum creaked, another penalty was awarded, and captain Colin Aldworth also saw yellow.
Although Scott was able to resume after his spell in the sin-bin, the damage was done, and the scoreboard was given a somewhat unbalanced look as back-row Mike Richards ran in two injury time tries.
The coaching staff agreed that Withycombe were worthy winners, although the margin of victory gave a false impression of the match as a whole. The stirring victories of early December, which took Teignmouth into the promotion places, now seem a long time ago, and the club may now have to resign itself to another year in this league, although the players will be looking for a morale-boosting victory away to lowly Torrington next week.