By v. Coventry Telegraph.
September 11 2014

Nuneaton, whose promotion charge faltered after a superb start last season, launched the new campaign with a 50-15 flourish against Longton.

The match started in familiar fashion, Joe Wilson drilling home his first penalty, but it was one of the summer arrivals, Zimbabwean Brandon Boshi, who opened the floodgates with a superb surge from his own ten-metre line to the opposition posts.

A brief spell of Longton pressure yielded a Grant Hallam penalty but scrum-half Tom Smitham’s 40m dash teed up another simple Wilson conversion.

He was on target again after Carl Jeffs and Elliot Brown created the space for the pack to drive Matt Aston over the line but pulled his kick wide after logging the fourth bonus-securing touchdown.

Darren Dean’s yellow card prefaced a Longton try from prop Joe Newton-Taylor that trimmed the interval lead to 29-8 but Nuns quickly re-established their control when centre Gavin Laycock picked his way through for another converted try.

Nick Walton opened the gate for Carl Jeffs, Wilson again converting. And although Longton pegged back a consolation try, scored by David Mclean and upgraded by Hallam, Nuns cashed in on hooker George Glenn’s stint in the sin-bin when George Adams battered his way through and Wilson took his individual haul to 20 points.

Kenilworth edged home 21-19 in their Midlands One West opener against Silhillians, maintaining the nip-and-truck trend established when they won the corresponding fixture 33-30 this time last year.

The Glasshouse Lane men seemed on course for a more comfortable verdict as they opened up a 14-0 interval lead, Josh Hickman upgrading tries by Alex Selby and Gaz Renowden.

Although Sils hit back with a converted try, Kenilworth re-established their control when Hickman crossed, leaving the extras to Simon Tyler.

But Silhillians responded with two more tries of their own, the second converted, to set up a tense finale.

Depleted by summer departures to bigger and better things, Barkers Butts were walloped 55-6 at Worcester Wanderers.

The Coventry outfit struck first with a Tom Stokes penalty but suffered a setback when the fly-half went off with a wrist injury.

With Ben Upton taking over at No.10 and back row forward Sam Brierley switching to centre, Barkers put in plenty of effort but consistently fell foul of the referee’s scrummaging dec-isions.

They were 31-6 adrift at the interval – Jamie Barnes marking his first league outing with a penalty – and although Mitch Horten twice had a sniff of the try line they couldn’t reverse that trend in the second period.

Matthew Walker took the eye in the young Barkers pack but a string of cards, including couple of reds for the home props, led to uncontested scrums and an increasingly disjointed match.

Berkswell & Balsall suffered a 52-14 reverse at Whitchurch despite enjoying a manpower advantage at the start of the second period when the home side had two men in the sin-bin.

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Local Rugby: Joe Wilson leads the way as Nuneaton..

Discussion started by Unofficial Coventry Rugby (IP Logged), 11/09/2014 08:21

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