Winning captain Marcus Cottle holds the cup aloft surrounded by his Topsham team-mates
TOPSHAM saw-off a spirited second-half fightback from Tiverton to win the Devon Intermediate Cup final 29-20.
Tiverton, urged on by a partisan home crowd, had plenty to do after turning round 21-6 down and very nearly did it.
Score by score Tiverton clawed back to trail 26-20 with a minute of normal time remaining – and the likelihood of eight or nine minutes of time added on to play.
With the game in the balance Topsham won a penalty that Tom Oxland planted between the posts for a nine-point lead.
Oxland’s penalty shot meant Tiverton had to score twice in the time left to win the final – and that was too tall an order.
It was a pulsating final that showed cup rugby at its finest and drew a crowd approaching 800 into the Bolham Road ground.
Ross Bovingdon, the director of rugby at Topsham and a starter at prop in the final, felt without such a dominant first-half performance the latter stages could have been even tenser.
“Our game plan was to keep the ball in play as much as possible and try to tire them out – and it seemed to work,” said Bovingdon.
“What we were not expecting was that Tiverton would kick a lot of ball into our backfield, which gave us space to run at them which we took advantage of.
“We went in 21-6 up, but we should have scored few more.”
Bovingdon acknowledged that Tiverton tightened-up their act in the second half and tried to play Topsham at their own game.
“Had Tiverton been a bit more open earlier, maybe the game would have been closer,” said Bovingdon.
“Up to 60 minutes we had no real worries: the last 20 minutes were hell, but we managed to hold them out.”
Jon Hill, the Tiverton coach, said although he was disappointed by the result he had no complaints about it.
“The best side won and I have no problem at all about losing a great game against a better side,” said Hill.
“We were held-up over the line twice in the last 10 minutes and on another night could have nicked it.”
Topsham’s Pat Gibbs and Tiverton’s Callum Stone traded penalties in the opening 13 minutes before the visitors hit the front with a try for Dec Hadley.
Gibbs missed the conversion but stroked over a penalty on 21 minutes then added the extras to a Joe Cave try as the half-hour mark approached. All Tiverton could manage in the same time frame was a Jack Sampson penalty.
A minute before the break Gibbs slotted a penalty to put Topsham 21-6 up.
Four minutes into the second half Topsham went further in front with a try engineered by Ethan Barnashone. Tiverton hit back three minutes later with a try for Alex Curtis that Sampson converted.
There was no more scoring until the 62nd minute when Tiverton’s Rocco Hartley broke away from a maul and crashed over the line. Sampson converted for a six-point game.
Now it was Topsham under the cosh and they had some good fortune when a dropped pass cost Tiverton what looked like a certain try out on the left.
A rare excursion into Tiverton territory earned Topsham a penalty and Gibbs kick opened-up a nine-point lead that instantly looked like a winning margin.
