Lacemen beaten by Falmouth but score line does not reflect their contribution

Honiton 1st XV opened their home campaign of the season with a disappointing 34-15 loss to Cornish side Falmouth, writes Jerry Rice.

Honiton still remain slightly depleted as several of the players were unavailable as they finish summer activities and with these changes continuity is a factor.

Electing to play up the Allhallows field, Honiton got of to a bad start when the visitors, clearly not affected by the long journey to East Devon, scored a converted try. Honiton bounced back straight away when Ollie Cave knocked over a penalty and he repeated this on 10 minutes to make it a one point game.

The half was pretty even, but for Honiton, building up phases of play was their down fall, and unforced errors hampered attacks.

Falmouth had the last word of the half when they scored a penalty and at the break they were a slender 10-6 up.

With the slope in their favour Honiton felt the game was well with in their grasp and an early Cave penalty raised hopes, but two quick tries really scuppered that notion and from then on Honiton were always playing catch up rugby at 22-12 down.

Despite this Honiton battled on and, with another Cave penalty, got to within one score of the Cornish side and they continued to press hard.

However, with time running out, the visitors sealed victory with two tries in the final five minutes and the 34-15 score line didn’t really reflect that Honiton had been in the contest for almost the entire 80 minutes.

Amongst the positives to draw from the outing was that there is definitely room for improvement and there were some good passages of play that suggest the Lacemen are not that far off the mark. Honiton’s penalty count against, amounted to just four in total, with none in the second half, which was good, and there was a star performance from Ollie Cave who not only kept Honiton in the game with his boot, but led from the front with his attacking play. Chris Lynch looked good on his senior debut, but despite all this it’s clear Honiton have not got of to the best of starts for this campaign. On Saturday (September 17), the Lacemen travel to Bodmin hoping to kick start the season with a victory on Cornish soil.