Longlevens RFC

Longlevens made the trip down the M5 to unfamiliar territory on Saturday to face second from bottom Avonmouth Old Boys.

The fast and organised start showed just how well prepared they were for this away game, in stark contrast to the previous away game two weeks ago. The first five minutes alone contained some scintillating rugby with Tom Griffiths making a fine break before offloading to Jack Cuthbert, unfortunately this didn’t end up with a score, but soon after Jed Holman-Jones managed to get over after some good build up play. Josh Lyons took a nice pass from the ruck and tipped on to Jed who powered over for the first score, 0-7.

Scores then came at regular intervals throughout the half as The Griffins realised they had the power and ability to go through at will. The next score came from Mike Yorke after a 50m run from Cuthbert. He was stopped short and the ball was worked wide left for Yorke to run in, 0-14.

Jake Fox was next on the score board following some pressure from Avonmouth. They fumbled a wide pass and Fox hacked the loose ball through. He gathered his own kick and sprinted clear for a converted score, 0-21.

Avonmouth were short of options so were utilising the kicking game. One speculative kick was aimed wide left at Yorke who unfortunately failed to gather, allowing the Avonmouth winger to pounce to make it 7-21.

Normal service was resumed shortly after when Steve Philips finished off good build up play from Holman-Jones and Brad Wilkins, and Jack Beck scored the first of his two with a lovely show and go through the gap, both converted, 7-35.

There was time for one more before half time, prop Harvey Walsingham popping up on the left to score a well worked try, half time score 7-42.

The second half started the way the first ended with Tom Griffiths showing his pace and power, breaking through tackles to score, followed by Griffiths turning provider and fizzing a lovely pass out to Henry York to cruise in, 7-54, the only conversion missed all day by Wilkins.

Griffiths was on the scoresheet again soon after, breaking tackles and going in from a full 50m out, and Beck got his second with a carbon copy of his first, dummying his way through to sprint clear. In-between this action Avonmouth got a try of their own, albeit a penalty try, making the score 14-68.

The final score of the day went to Walsingham who was on the end of a well-executed catch and drive, final score 14-75.

This was a very good all-round performance and the score could have been much higher had The Griffins taken all of their chances. Wilkins was excellent with the boot, Mark Hancock was a work horse all game and Holman-Jones led by example. Tom Griffiths is taking control of games and he leads the attack well with Jack Beck. Next up, home against Barton Hill.