Regional 1 South West: Exmouth 43 Weston-super-Mare RFC 18

Weston-super-Mare RFC fell to their third successive defeat after they were beaten 43-18 at Exmouth in the Regional 1 South West last Saturday.

Things didn’t start well for Weston when they were pushed off their usually strong scrum, and Exmouth scrum-half Matt Ryan pounced on the loose ball to give the hosts an early lead after just four minutes.

Weston attacked from the restart and were rewarded with a penalty kicked by fly-half George Nuttycombe. The number 10 then produced a peach of a 50-22 to put Weston in a strong attacking position.

But full-back Chris Young just failed to gather in the act of scoring. Exmouth were conceding a lot of penalties, which eventually led to the obligatory yellow card. 

Despite a lot of endeavour, Weston were undone by some shoddy passing allied to some poor set piece, with the hosts benefiting from Weston’s lack of a killer punch.

After Young was yellow-carded for a deliberate knock-on, they regrouped and took advantage of some poor defending to increase their lead with a converted try. 

Exmouth increased its lead to sixteen points when left-wing Jake Inglis went through a more porous defence. Nuttycombe cut the lead with a penalty on the stroke of half-time.

The second half began with another converted try for the hosts when Weston ran out of cover, and they added to this with a penalty shortly after.

Weston then had their best period of the afternoon and were rewarded when a deft chip by scrum-half Dan Lomax was gathered by left wing Hayden Main who finished with aplomb.

This, however, proved to be a false dawn because, despite the endeavour, there was no clinical play to follow up the hard work, with Exmouth scoring twice.

Despite a late converted try by replacement hooker Josh Mynett, Weston ended up well beaten. 

Another disappointing day for Weston who remain at the foot of the table, and a lot of hard work is needed to look at the deteriorating situation. 

On Saturday (November 18) Weston host ninth-placed St Austell in the first-ever meeting between the two clubs at 2.30 pm.