After years of losing out to their Wiltshire neighbours, Calne have finally beaten Westbury consecutively home and away. At the very end of last season Calne put to pay any Westbury hopes of promotion and today Calne were determined not to make it a one off.

Calne started the game strong with everyone well fired up and within minutes were chasing kicks put into the Westbury 22 putting pressure on the defence and causing a knock on. However, it was Westbury who took the early advantage through a rolling maul. A Westbury back-rower popped off the side of the maul and crashed over for the converted score.

With the old reliable front row of Ian Smart, Mick Dyer and Matt Arnold, Calne won a scrum against the head, No8 Alan Wicks picked up, went blind, drew the winger and laid off a simple little pass for Flyhalf Lewis Baker to stroll over in the corner for the first try, which despite being from the touchline was slotted nicely between the posts for the extra 2 points.

Calne kept applying pressure after they received the kick off going straight back up field causing Westbury to concede a penalty which Donagan also converted.

Westbury then got their second score, from the kick off Calne made a simple mistake and Westbury capitalised on it well, picked the loose ball up and scored the try in the corner.

This was a wake up call for Calne and from this time there looked to be only one winner. The next score came from an excellent backs move with full back James Gladding joining the back line and providing winger Mike Smith with perfectly weighted and timed pass to give Smith to run in and score another converted try.

With Westbury's frustration now starting to show the next score came from the boot of Donegan again after converting another penalty. Then came the best score of the match, from their own 22 Calne won a ruck and started moving up field with the ball passing through a multitude of hands, both forwards and backs, with players in support anyone could have scored but it was Guthrie Holiday who received the last pass and crossed the line taking Calne 25-12 up into half time.

With Calne not satisfied with the score line they vowed not to give away any more points and this ended up being the case.

The second half was a bit scrappy compared to the first but Calne still raised their game when needed, the home side were awarded a 5 metre scrum after some intense pressure and were driving the away pack backwards and were looking good for a push over try but the post stopped the scrum, Westbury then gave away a penalty at the re-scrum for collapsing it under pressure, Damon Murphy took the tap and passed out to Alan Wicks about 4 metres out who was not going to be stopped from this short distance, drove through the defence to score. Donegan converted this also.

The final score of the game came from Lewis Baker. After receiving the ball from yet another cleanly won line out from Paul Grundy, Baker dummied half the Westbury side to cross over for his second try of the day, which was converted. This is how the score ended but the performance was clouded a little by Westbury?s frustration coming to breaking point in the last play of the game and causing a bit of a free for all but it all broke up and both sides showed their sportsmanship when Calne went straight over to shake the hands of the away side. An outstanding all round performance earned Paul Grundy the man of the match award.

Final Score. Calne 39 Westbury 12

BACK