Cornish Pirates

Cornish Pirates 47 Nottingham 19

Website match report Cornish Pirates v Nottingham

Western Morning News view www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/rugby

(Nottingham) Evening Post report http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/sport

Bedford Blues 12 Doncaster Knights 23

An out of sorts Blues side fell victim to a determined Doncaster Knights outfit at Goldington Road as the visitors executed a near perfect smash and grab raid.

Bedford, who had hoped to finish third in the regular season, allowed the Knights to get the better of the Goldington Road slope in the first half and turned around 13-0 down after a try from Wright and a conversion and two penalties from Warnock.

The Blues offered little until the second period and started brightly with a try from Dodge. But a Warnock penalty kept momentum flowing for the Knights and as Bedford chased the game even harder an interception pass thrown by Vass was picked off by Dougie Flockhart and he raced under the posts for Doncaster’s second try.

A late try for Bedford from Taylor converted by Dorrian proved in vain as they fell short of collecting a losing bonus point.

Bedfordshire on Sunday report
www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/Sport

Birmingham & Solihull 21 Plymouth Albion 36

A strong first half display from Plymouth Albion not only rewarded the many travelling fans who helped clear snow from the Sharmans Cross Road pitch before kick-off but also gave the Devon side a fighting chance of staying out of the relegation play-offs.

Graham Dawe`s side led 31-7 at the break after the home side, playing their first match at their own ground for two months, briefly led 7-3 in the early stages. But four converted tries killed the game off as Albion cut loose.

Liam Gibson crossed the home line first followed by scores from Keni Fisilau, Ben Mercer and Sione Tu`ipulotu. Hallett converted all four to add to his earlier penalty leaving the Bees facing a hiding.

But the home side fought back in the second half and converted tries from Brake and Hunt cut the Albion lead to just ten points whilst lock Tom Skelding was in the sin bin. A late try from George Porter sealed the win for Albion.

Report /www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/albion

Graham Dawe`s thoughts www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/albion

Exeter Chiefs 36 Moseley 19

The Chiefs did rivals Plymouth Albion a huge favour at Sandy Park on Saturday running in five tries against Moseley and forcing them to head back home empty handed.

The Midlanders now lie ninth in the table two points behind Plymouth and with a daunting trip to Bristol facing them in their final game on March 13 th.

Despite leaking late tries again as the Chiefs relaxed at 36-7 Rob Baxter was for the most part happy and told The Western Morning News, “It was a little bit of a mixed bag. We played half an hour to 40 minutes of probably some of the best rugby that has been seen at Sandy Park for a long time – breaking tackles, running hard, offloading, cutting lines, clearing the ball away quickly from the breakdown – and Moseley

looked like a team who were chasing shadows, which was fantastic from our perspective.”

"However, in the last half an hour of the match, we lost control of the game a little bit. I think signs of that started to show just before half-time when we almost got into show-off mode, and we were running into holes and looking for offloads, rather than working hard and making the right decisions.”

Gareth Steenson converted three early tries for the home side from Tui, Thomas and Foster and added a penalty as the Chiefs raced to a 24 point lead before Justin Mensah-Coker responded with a score for the visitors.

Foster struck again after the break as did Matt Jess and with Exeter in cruise control Moseley grabbed late tries from Williams and Rodwell.

Match report www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk

Ian Smith believes Moseley can survive www.birminghammail.net/birmingham-sport

London Welsh 3 Bristol 28

The aspirations of London Welsh were put firmly in their place at Old Deer Park on Saturday as Bristol delivered a clinical performance to claim their 18 th win of the campaign.

With seven minutes played Aled Thomas struck a penalty to level the scores at 3-3 and cancel out an Adrian Jarvis drop goal. However the next 73 belonged to the visitors who at one stage were reduced to thirteen on the field.

Jarvis struck a penalty and converted his own try before hooker Ross Johnstion added a second touchdown after 31 minutes. Jarvis again obliged with the extras before slottinga third penalty for a 23-3 half-time lead.

Prop Darren Crompton added a third try, the only points of the second half, leaving Head Coach Paul Hull satisfied with the team performance.

He told the Evening Post,

“We really raised the intensity in training during the week and we had said that this was a big game for us.

This is a good shot in the arm, because we had great momentum leading up to the big freeze and it's taken us a bit of time to get ourselves back on track. We've had the wins, but the performances perhaps haven't been quite as high as we'd like them. But this was a massive step in the right direction."

Full report www.thisisbristol.co.uk/bristolrugby

Rotherham Titans 41 Coventry 11

A dominant six-try display from the Titans as Clifton Lane kept alive their hopes of making it to the top eight and left Coventry thoroughly demoralised as they scramble to find some form for the play-offs.

Rotherham still need to win their final fixture at Bedford next month to make sure of escaping the relegation battle but put their concerns to one side as they demolished the hapless Midlanders.

Titans Number 8 Ryan Burrows bagged a hat-trick of tries starting after just 5 minutes as the Titans quickly set about their opponents. Brad Hunt added a second and Jonny West converted both with Coventry`s initial reply coming from a Ben Russell penalty.

Coventry`s only try of the game came from James Lewis but not to be outdone the Titans hit back with a West penalty and a third try this time from Kleeberger, as they took a 22-8 lead in at half-time.

A Russell penalty early in the second half completed Coventry`s scoring for the afternoon and with both teams now ensuring a brisk trade in the sin-bin the home side cut loose again with three more tries.

Burrows sealed his hat-trick with a brace of scores either side of a try from Jon Feeley.

Match report and Rotherham reaction www.yorkshirepost.co.uk

Alarm bells ringing at Coventry www.coventrytelegraph.ne

Maynard searching for inspiration www.coventrytelegraph.net