DEVONPORT Services II reached the Lockie Cup final for a fourth successive year by seeing off an understrength Tavistock side 66-7 in their semi-final at Keyham on Saturday.
Awaiting them in the showpiece Plymouth Combination final will be either OPMs, The Medics or Plymouth Argaum, whose games have got delayed by postponed league and national cup matches.
Services II, who sit top of Counties Two Devon, were always too strong for a makeshift Tavistock side, although the visitors did have some good spells, particularly in the first half.
But in the second period, Services II, who had the luxury of been able to bring on the likes of Tom Richards, Matt Scott and Yianni Costas from the bench, really made their set plays work and scored five tries off good line-out moves.
Yet by fulfilling the fixture, Tavistock will drop into the RNEC Cup, which will still give them hopes of reaching a final.
“It was a tough day at the office,” admitted Tavistock head coach Leigh Puttock. “Services are a well-drilled side.”
Tavistock only had five players feature on Saturday who had played against Services II at the start of the season when they narrowly lost 26-20 at home.
Puttock knows the club have to try and improve their availability for away games if they are to pull clear of danger in Counties Two Devon.
“Some lads see it as a hardship to travel from Tavvy to Plymouth, but we have other lads that do Plymouth to Tavvy every week and don’t think anything of it,” he said.
“There were some massively good patches (on Saturday) and we have got heart. We have got players that should be surrounded by more committed players.
“From one to 15, everyone of them has the ability, but we’ve got to train.
“The weather has been horrible, and the floodlights stopped working on the night we were meant to have training (this week), so everything that can go wrong is going wrong, which makes lads not enjoy their rugby when you want them to.”
He added: “We now have Exeter Saracens away on a week that was unscheduled and I’ve already had four or five players say they can’t make it. We would have taken a strong side there when it was supposed to be played, so that’s frustrating.”
Services II’s player-coach Aiden Taylor was happy to see his team secure another cup final spot. They are already in the Devon Second XV Cup final.
“We are in another cup final, so that’s two finals we are in and we are top of the league,” said Taylor. “So, it is looking good at the moment.”
He added: “There were some lovely tries out there and we played really well in spells, but we were a bit disappointed with some of the rugby as we were a bit scrappy, especially in that first half.
“We didn’t play last week and played Honiton with a scratch side, but we are now getting back to where we can be.
“I wish we had been a bit neater at times. When we played our systems and shape, they couldn’t live with us, and we were making line break after line break, but at times we were just trying to force it a bit too much on this surface. It was like the ball was a hot potato, when we should have been just carrying it in, playing the phases and keep going to the next one.
“But we said at half-time we needed to look at our strike plays and see if we can break them from our line-out or scrums and we did score some outstanding tries.
“They (Tavistock) were competitive, especially that first half.
“The first kick-off, we’ve got the ball, gone out the back and gone the length of the field. We were thinking is this what it is going to be like all game, but to be fair to them boys, they stuck at it.”
Services II took less than one minute to open the scoring when winger Brad Lumley scored in the left corner after Toby Moss had put him clear.
The home side nearly scored again from the restart, but gradually Tavistock settled and did have some good pressure but could not make it tell.
And on 19 minutes, Services II showed them how to do it when they turned Tavistock over and broke quickly with flanker Henry Gascoyne scoring.
It got better for them seven minutes later when Aaron Duffield scored after the hosts had turned Tavistock over in their own 22.
Leighton Stark converted that try, like he had the first two, to put his side 21-0 up.
But Tavistock did respond and Royal Marine number eight Rob Hughes intercepted a pass and ran 70 metres to score under the posts and Freddie Fuller added the conversion.
Services II, though, scored two further tries from great length-of-the-field moves courtesy of scrum-half Rohan Johnson and Gascoyne to take a 35-7 lead into the break.
The second half was mainly one-way traffic with Tavistock tiring on the artificial pitch and Services II having a strong bench to bring on.
Moss got Services II’s first try of the second period from a well-worked line-out move and that was the tone for the rest of the half, with Lumley, Sam Fincham, Costas and Ewan Piercy all adding further touch-downs and Stark ended the day with eight conversions.
The match did finish 10 minutes early due to a worrying injury to one of Services’ young backs.
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