Topsham Colts remember Dai Parks

On a bright sunny Saturday afternoon on the second pitch at Exmouth, the boys line up at the start for a minutes silence. Exmouth had very respectfully lowered their club flag to half-mast.

The boys take time to find their rhythm with a much improved Exmouth XV making life reasonably difficult and they compete hard. Tops move into good territory but small mistakes enable Exmouth to make their own moves into Topsham territory.

Mid way through the first half and Tops score first with a 25m line out that moves forward in a maul and into a ruck, ball out to Oz Martin who drives through, passes to Zac Maclellen who dinks through and off loads to Harry Collison to go under the posts and Gwyn Parks converts to open the scoring 0-7.

Exmouth though are intent on competing and showing their worth which they do 5 minutes later by slickly moving the ball through hands and they score wide right but miss the conversion to make the score 5-7 at half time.

The second half starts with Tops redoubling their efforts and in particular Tristan May shows what a good player he is by menacing Exmouth both in defence and attack enabling Tops to take advantage of his work to get close to scoring 3 or 4 times.

Fin Marks kicks a little chip through that Oz Martin secures and breaks two defenders to run clear from just beyond halfway and looks as if he’s quick enough to get to the try line but the covering defender gets his angles spot on to bundle him into touch just short.

Both teams exchange penalty kicks at the posts but both fall short before Tops move up the pitch and Gwyn kicks crossfield which the defender catches but Tarquin Kerton Johnson instantly strips the ball away and runs in to score near the posts. Gwyn converts and the score moves to 5-14.

Towards the end Exmouth get a yellow for a marginal tip tackle and the final event is Gwyn having a shot at goal from almost half way which he secures to the delight of his team mates who mob him. Final score is 5-17.

Tristan May gets Player of the Match

On a post-match note Topsham were deducted a point for an admin error so only a 3 point win.