Exmouth U11's reach Devon Shield Final

Exmouth U11’s played in their first Devon festival for three years and their first in contact form of Rugby on top of the hill in cold and blustery conditions. On a very hard pitch which was to take its toll on players from all clubs.

Exmouth had a fairly tough draw in the pool stages and didn’t really get going in their pool games resulting in losses to Barnstaple 14- 7and then Okehampton 21- 7. This precluded them from taking any further part in the Devon Cup.

In the second round the young cockles started to gain some confidence and found their form beating a good South Molton side 7 – 0 then Crediton 28 – 0. This set them up for a Devon Shield final with Tavistock. In the meantime Exmouth were asked if they could spare any players to assist Sidmouth and then a similar request came from local rivals Withycombe, credit must go to Alec Dunstan, Zach Lines & Eddie Ford who volunteered to put on the Sidmouth Shirt and Ben Tew who joined Withies for the day (all from a maximum squad of 17 players).

The final against Tavistock was to be a close fought contest, made even tougher by Tavy clinching two opportunist tries early in the first half the second of which was while Exmouth’s Harry Neath-Rogers had to leave the field due to a bloody nose and replacement Blu Sandy had not got onto the field. Eventually Exmouth were to get some reward for their efforts when Harry Sprague stole the ball from a Tavy Lineout and crashed through to score. In the second half Exmouth threw everything at Tavy but could not manage to find the opening to score the second try which could have handed them the win due to Tavy failing to convert their first try. But it was not to be and time ran out, playing only seven minutes each way does not leave much time to claw back from a two try deficit.

The lads can be very proud of their achievement and look forward to a tough encounter next week at home to Taunton knowing that they are capable of winning if they play as they did on Sunday.