Counties Three Devon South & West side Old Techs played their first warm-up match as they were beaten 33-19 by a strong Saltash II side at the new artificial Foulston Park pitch at Brickfields.
They handed debuts to Frazer Tatchell, Reece Boase, Uther Salter and to teenager Ben Evans, who got to line-up in the back-row alongside his player-coach dad, Billy.
Saltash had already played a couple of pre-season games against Launceston and Tamar Saracens and they did boost their Counties Three Cornwall squad with some players who did play for their first team in Western West last season like Phil Eatwell, Laurie Thomson, Charlie Knight, Scott Williams and Greg Eatwell. They also included former OPMs forward Billy Garratt in their starting line-up after his move over the Tamar this year.
However, the Ashes had to play 50 minutes of the fixture with 14 men after having had a player sent off for head-on-head contact in a tackle. Their win also came at another cost as they lost back Ollie Crawford to a nasty looking shoulder injury.
Yet both clubs will have been happy with the competitive and physical run-out, with the match tied at 19-19 all until the final 10 minutes when Saltash scored two quick converted tries.
The Ashes had gone 19-0 up with backs Crawford, Tom Knight and Carl Wood scoring in the corners and Henry Taylor adding two good conversions.
But Techs got into the game and after Saltash were reduced to 14 players, they pulled a try back with a fine effort from former Ashes player Kieran Hurrell to make it 19-5 at the break.
After the interval Billy Evans scored two tries within the space of 10 minutes, which were both converted by Sam Matts, to level the contest.
However, Saltash finished strongly with Charlie Knight and Greg Eatwell scoring fine long-range efforts to seal the win.
After going 7-0 down in the first few minutes after gifting their visitors an interception try, the Devonport side stormed into a 31-7 half-time lead thanks to two tries by young fly-half Isaac Venner and further touch-downs by Will Pooley, Sam Winfield and James Thorp.
Topsham made changes and came back in the second period and scored four unanswered tries to close to within two points at 31-29.
But tries by Winfield and by back Ethan Williams put Services III back in control before Topsham scored a consolation effort late on.
Ivybridge also continued their build-up for the new season with a 38-26 victory over Western West side Torquay Athletic at Cross-in-Hand on Saturday.
The match was played in four 20-minute periods and both clubs used large squads to give game-time to as many players as they could.
Owen Garner, Angus Harris, Finn Hamilton, Harry Newman-Wild and Matt Grieveson were among their points scorers.
On Thursday night, Tavistock opened their pre-season campaign when they took on Launceston II at Polson Bridge.
Tavistock were beaten 38-24 by a strong Launceston side, but they felt there were plenty of positives from the performance.
“We were really pleased with the bits we took off the training pitch and put out there,” said head coach Leigh Puttock.
Gallery from Old Techs v Saltash
Gallery from Devonport Services III v Topsham III
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