Calne’s Powergen junior vase run came to an end on Saturday after travelling 2 hours down to Honiton. Knowing what the weather had been like in the area Calne made a call to see if the pitch was playable and got the reply of “we have inspected both pitches and one of them should be”, as Calne prefer the more exiting running game the conditions proved to be the biggest contribution to their downfall as quoted by Honiton’s captain “We have beaten a number of sides due to the condition of our pitch so we were glad we got the home draw”.

With vice captain Neil Watkins celebrating his 40th birthday Calne hoped for a good result but it just wasn’t to be. The visiting side opened the scoring by applying pressure in the first 5 minutes and forcing Honiton to give away a penalty, which Donegan converted but this ended up being the only points they would score.

The possession in the first half was fairly equal but the home side made more use of theirs mainly through their much larger pack, who, with credit where credits due had the making of the Calne pack in the scrums by driving them backwards, but somehow the partnership of No.8 Alan Wicks and Scrum half Andy Donegan still managed to get the ball out to the backs but unfortunately the flying centres Neil Young and Guthrie Holiday were not able to show their heels to the opposition due to having about 3lb of mud added to their boots with every step made.

The home side kept up the pressure and scored their first try in the corner to give them the lead, followed shortly by the second next to the posts after some strong mauling by the forwards taking them 12-3 up after the conversion.

Then come the 3rd try just on the brink of half time to go into the break 17-3.

It would have been easy for Calne to let their heads go down in the second half but they kept fighting to the end. For the first time this season, the front row of Ian Smart, Matt Arnold and Mick Dyer didn’t dominate the scrums but they certainly put up a good fight and according to Matt Arnold “the reason the scrum went backwards was because they must have had much longer studs!”.

With some good kicking from Fly half Lewis Baker and typical thumping runs from Daron Thomas, Calne spent most of the second half in the home sides half but were unable to convert pressure into points, just falling 1 or 2 yards short on a number of occasions.

Honiton were only down in the Calne half a handful of times but managed to score another converted try and a penalty to finish the game with a 27-3 win to take them to the next round, it could have been higher if it wasn’t for the ferocious tackling from Guthrie Holiday.

Calne awarded their man of the match to Neil Watkins for his all round play which was fitting on his 40th birthday.

Calne are back to league fixtures starting Saturday when they host Westbury at the Recreation Ground.

Final Score. Honiton27 Calne 3

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