Depleted Chiefs Defeat Honiton

Written by Paul Brown

New season, new territory.
Following two highly successful seasons it was now time for the Chiefs to face the test of a higher league, giving Argaum league debuts to Joe Avazian at hooker and Callum Mills at water boy.

The Chiefs started brightly taking the game to the home side who were unable to keep the Devon & Cornwall new boys from rampaging up the field into Honiton territory. It wasn’t long before the referee gave Jake the chance to put Argaum into the lead but the penalty sailed wide of the sticks.

This seemed to give the home side the kick they needed and they took up the challenge laid down. They soon earned themselves a penalty which looked kickable but the rugby gods had other ideas.

With the game deadlocked Argaum were once again on the attack. With great vision (Dave has another view on this), Ben Glanfield scooped the ball out of the back of a ruck and put up a great box kick, it bounced out of the Honiton defenders arms and landed in the hands of Jamie Burton. They were never going to stop him and he went over in the corner, and with Jake adding the extras, the Chiefs took a well deserved lead. With their tails up, the Argaum XV let nothing through, tackling was relentless and bodies were being patched up and redeployed into battle. Forwards and backs were making in roads and before long Ieuan Evans showed his pace to add another 5 points, followed by 2 from the metronomic boot of Jake.

The pack were having a great day winning scrum and lineout with great regularity and the game took a negative turn when the scrums were forced to go uncontested, negating the advantage.

The backs were also causing the home defence problems of their own, both with their tackling and pace. Anything that got past the front line of defence was met with a stern backline and the holy grail of a try was looking less likely as time ticked by. The constant work rate paid dividends when Evans dived over for his second giving the visitors a 19-0 lead. It could have so easily been more and if only a couple of final passes found their mark Argaum could have made it a 5 point introduction to the new league.

To give credit where it’s due, Honiton never gave up and battled to the end. The tenacity was rewarded with a converted try in the last minute, closing the game out with a 5-19 score line.

Argaum have now made their mark and proved that we’re not here to make up the numbers. Next week sees us at home against Hayle. Let’s see if we can get a good home crowd up at Bickleigh to cheer them on in what will hopefully be another fine performance.