Minety power their way past Puddletown (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Minety power their way past Puddletown

The Minety 1st XV opened this year's cup campaign by convincingly beating Puddletown by 49 points to nil.

Although Puddletown play in the southern section of the same division as Minety, they offered little in the way of effective opposition and were soon struggling in all the set pieces.

The visitors got the scoreboard moving with an early penalty goal and then ran in three tries before the interval. They began to run out of momentum in the final 20 minutes of the game, but still managed to add five further tries before the final whistle.

The back row were in fine form again for Minety, with flanker Luke Huckin leading the tackle count and doing sterling work in the lineout, jumping at number two and frequently poaching his opponents, ball.

Minety fly half Ryan Dowling had an excellent game, running in three great individual tries. Reuben Saunders executed a spectacular 40 metre dash down the left touchline for his touchdown, while the other tries were scored by winger Ollie Bown, hooker Will Howse, captain and scrumhalf Andy Brown and number 8 Mark Holdsworth.

"I thought that we played well for the first hour," said Brown.

"The final 20 minutes were disappointing.

"Over all, it was a decent team performance, though we didn't play as well as we did the previous week at Wootton Bassett."

The 2nd XV found it harder work against Supermarine seconds in Dorset & Wilts Division 3 North, and lost by 7 points to 22.