South West One West

North Petherton 32, St Austell 6

NORTH Petherton captain Damien Griffin paid tribute to his forward pack after North Petherton produced a stunning performance to beat promotion favourites St Austell 32-6 at Beggars Brook, writes Simon Freeman.

Miles McNeillie, James Taylor, Jack Kohler (2) and Harry Roberts all crossed for the home side – but Griffin was more pleased to have kept the visitors at bay.

He said: “I would like to praise the forwards again, they stayed as a tight unit for the whole game again.

“I’m really chuffed with the defence because St Austell are a good side who play a good game and we needed to be on our game to keep them out.

“I believe a performance like that will continue to lift team spirit and the crowd were brilliant.”

The opening exchanges belonged to the visitors who applied enough pressure to force Petherton to make some last ditch tackles.

St Austell counter attacked smartly and frequently made yardage and they opened the scoring with a penalty.

Petherton began to find some momentum and play some entertaining rugby - breaks by Sam Williams and Chad Lowrie put the home side in attacking positions only to be met by some resolute defending.

In the 28th minute the ball arrived in the hands of Toby Harris who tore his way through three opponents to offload to Arron Gibbs - and a final pass to Miles McNeillie completed a scintillating try, Harry Roberts converted.

They scored their second minutes later as Jack Kohler burst through a gap before finding James Taylor to crash over the line. Roberts kicked a penalty before half-time to extend the lead to 15-3 – and shortly after half-time, Kohler was in the action again as he darted down the blindside for a score.

Kohler crossed for his second courtesy of neat work from Taylor and Robertsrounded off an impressive performance from Pethy with a fifth try of the afternoon.