Cirencester II 17

Longlevens II 10

CIRENCESTER seconds just got the better of their counterparts from Longlevens in a closely-fought encounter.

Cirencester started brightest with some great forward runs from Thorn, Buchalik and Morley-Jones.

Forward pressure allowed the backs to play on the front foot and a superb passage of play saw the ball go down the line before winger Pumfrett came back inside to offload to Armitage who raced away to score; Lister converted to make it 7-0.

The game was evenly balanced for the remainder of the first half apart from the scrum where the Ciren pack were dominating, but all they could add was a penalty on 35 minutes kicked by Lister.

The second half started with Longlevens running hard and straight and they were rewarded five minutes in with an unconverted try.

The Longlevens front row were struggling and the referee and both captains agreed to go to uncontested scrums for safety reasons. The dynamic of the game changed slightly and the breakdown became more important.

From one ruck in their own 22 the Longlevens scrum half had a clearing kick charged down by Armitage who gathered the ball to score. With Lister converting that took the score to 17-5 Longlevens were not done though and a period of pressure led to Ciren prop Owen being sin-binned for handling in the ruck. The visitors elected to take the scrum and were able to force the ball over, but the conversion was missed leaving a final score at 17-10.

It was extremely pleasing for Cirencester to give debuts to three of the current crop of U18s: Jack Lister at scrum half, Ollie Armitage at fly half and Jaime Watts at flanker.