Plymouth Albion 26 ~ Devonport Services 21.

At first sight, the fixture looked to me like a mismatch, but what do I know? Wiser rugby brains thought it a good idea.
On a nice evening at The Brickfields but with a slight mist arriving as the sun went down, the timings are probably not quite accurate there was no clock or scoreboard, Albion started well with a try inside five minutes but missed the conversion. 5~0.
I had the sinking feeling that this was the beginning of a long evening for us.
How wrong was I.
Twelve minutes in and a scrum to us on our left wing and in their half was won Liam Jarvis and Dylan Daly attacked down the blindside, with Dylan running the ball in to score, even though I was on the far side of the pitch and could not see but I bet Dylan was smiling as he went in, he always does.
Kieran Down showed how to take a conversion with a super sideline kick. 5~7.
On about minute twenty-four, we scored again in a similar way and from a similar position, this time it was Joe Daley who scored. Another textbook sideline conversion from Kieran Down. 5~14.
Just after the half-hour mark, Albion scored and converted to close the gap, 12~14, then seven minutes later another seven pointer to Albion and they pulled away slightly to 19~14.
That was it till the halftime whistle.

Four minutes after the start of the second half we had a good breakaway by two players from our own half getting well into their half before it was stopped.
For half an hour we defended the Albion attacks, they clearly had some good fast runners amongst their backs and some rather large forwards running at us but our tackling was superb with lots of noisy cheering from a decent crowd of our supporters every time one of their players was stopped or stopped and driven backwards.
Then after thirty one minutes we scored our third try and took the lead when Rikki Bentham pushed his way over on the right wing, once again a great sideline conversion this time by young Harrison Slade took us back into the lead by 19~21.
We continued to hold Albion as they pushed hard to get the win. We had our chances late on to score from scrums and lineouts deep inside their twenty-two.
However, it was about seven minutes before the end when Albion eventually scored their fourth try and took the lead, and a really good sideline conversion took them to a 26~21 lead.
The last few minutes were played out with us defending further attacks on our line for Albion to eventually kick the ball into touch for the final whistle.
Trial games are always a difficult way to gauge the relative strengths of two sides, a large number of players on the bench and substitutes being made on a regular basis means the balance of power can change very quickly.
However the final score is, if nothing else, a fair judge of a side's tackling willingness and ability, in that I think that the boys really did a great job for the club.
There is no doubt that Albion has many really good players but as fast or large as they may be determined tackling keeps the score down. That is what we did.
The scrum was pushed back but never really seriously, there were scrums that we held and once we pushed them back and twisted them, unfortunately the referee adjudged we had deliberately wheeled it.
The youngsters in our team never looked out of place nor did they seem overawed by playing against Albion.
The whole experience can only make the team and individuals stronger and more self-confident.
I was wrong, it was just the right fixture to play.