Winscombe lost narrowly to Whitehall in a promotion play-off match to the Western Counties League.

Winscombe 13 pts

Whitehall 21 pts

WINSCOMBE were narrowly beaten in this play-off match for promotion to the Western Counties League by Whitehall.

Whitehall took the lead with an early penalty, but Winscombe hit back when James The visitors edged ahead again with another penalty. Winscombe took the lead after good work from Owen Howell, Will Thomas and Matt Truscott almost put Rhys Lewis over.

From the line-out, Whitehall couldn’t control their throw-in and Thomas pounced on the loose ball in the dead-ball area for the opening try. Pugh stuck a fine conversion from wide out with four minutes of the half remaining.

Whitehall fumbled the restart and from a steady scrum, the ball was sent wide to Lewis, who drew a penalty. Thomas took it quickly and Whitehall’s failure to retreat 10 metres saw Pugh extend the lead on the stroke of half-time.

After the break, Whitehall kicked a penalty to within five metres of the home tryline. A converted try from the driving maul brought the scores level in the 50th minute.

Warren collected the restart and broke past the chasers to send Thomas charging towards the goal-line. When his pass was intentionally knocked down, Winscombe chose to scrummage five metres out. They failed to score and Whitehall broke out to earn another successful penalty.

Winscombe were building pressure on the Whitehall 22 when they were hit by a sucker punch. The outside-half side-stepped a charging tackler and broke to halfway, from where they made the most of a two-on-one to score a try that sealed the game.

Winscombe came close to scoring when Howell’s accurate cross-kick to the corner just evaded the chasers and then did extremely well to prevent a repeat of Whitehall’s first try.

Howell’s last ditch tackle then prevented a certain Whitehall try before he took a quick penalty to send Louis Hooper, Flower, Dan Salway, Lewis and Thomas on the counter.

Another intentional knock-down gave Winscombe a penalty kick to the corner, but their throw-in was stolen and with it their final chance to narrow the margin of defeat.