Devon U18 Boys 35 v Oxfordshire U18 Boys 0

The Devon U18 Boys made it two wins from two on Sunday 16th Dec 2023 with another convincing win over Oxfordshire up at Hartpury College and kept a clean sheet infront of the South West England selectors.

Devon had a dominant scrum and eventually midway through the second half the referee had to switch to uncontested scrums for safety reasons as Oxfordshire just couldn’t handle the pressure the Devon forwards were excerpting on them.

Captain Matthew Whitlock opened the scoring with the first try after 5 minutes of play leading and setting the tone for the rest of the team. Devon 5 – 0 Oxfordshire.

The next ten minutes of the game was pretty even but Oxfordshire never looked like scoring as the Devon defensive formations were working well and kept knocking them back.

Eventually Devon winger James Pullan broke away for the first of his two tries on the 14th and 31st minutes. That concluded the first half with Devon leading 15 points to Nil.

The second half started with all the 8 replacements coming on to make an immediate impact with replacement Charlie Muir going over the white wash in the 1st minute of the restart. Devon 20 – 0 Oxfordshire. Back row Rory Medley added another in the 10th minute making the score 25 – 0.

The fresh front row made it very hard going for the Oxfordshire pack as they were pushing them back in every scrum and true to form up popped the powerful front rower Albert Dowse to claim his try of the game on his usual short dive over the line, Devon 30 – 0.

It was around this time the game referee had to intervene and go to uncontested scrums for the safety of the Oxfordshire front row which the Devon pack were not happy about but in the referee applied common sense as we didn’t want any injuries.

The game continued with Devon piling on lots of pressure but kept spoiling a lot of changes with the final pass or not holding onto possession but in the last couple of minutes of the game another front rower Ben Winters popped over to bag himself a try. The final score Devon 35 Oxfordshire Nil.

The team are now looking forward to he Christmas break were they will return to Hartpury in the new year to face Dorset & Wiltshire on the 7th January with a 12pm KO.