Rams’ forwards coach, Owen Root, must have thought it was not his side’s day when Rams lost lineout captain Ollie Taylor, who popped a rib at the kick-off. Root was forced to reshuffle an already-reshuffled pack by moving blindside flanker Louis Wolf into the second row alongside number 8, Jamie Gutteridge. But Root was full of praise for his men and said “Ollie’s [Taylor] injury was a big loss as he is a high quality lineout forward, but I thought Louis Wolf did a great job in the row alongside Jamie Gutteridge and full marks to those boys because they never panicked. Craig Nightingale also did a great job for us off the bench and the pack provided a platform which is absolutely essential at Redruth if you are to have any chance of winning at what is one of the most difficult places to get points in National 2”.

In fact it was substitute Nightingale, a product of the Rams’ youth section, who opened the scoring on the 5th minute to finish a well-engineered try. Alex Seers added the extras to give the Reading men a 7-0 lead with just 3 minutes’ played.

And it didn’t take the away side long to extend their lead to 12 points, courtesy of Ben Henderson’s 12th touchdown of the season.

Redruth hit back on the 16th minute with a well-executed catch and drive from a lineout to give hooker Richard Brown the opportunity to emulate his opposite number and grab a try for the home side. Aaron Simmonds slotted the conversion to close the deficit to just 5 points.

With both sides battling for supremacy, it was man of the match Louis Wolf who pounced for a try in the 26th minute, Seers adding the extras and then grabbing 3 more points from a penalty on the 29th minute to make it 20-7 to the Rams.

But it was the Reds that finished stronger in the first session with No 8, Sam Stevens, dotting down on the 38th minute, and the reliable Simmonds grabbing his 2nd conversion of the afternoon, to make the half-time score 20-14 to Rams.

The 2nd half belonged to the Rams and was testament to the defensive coaching of Danny Batty. Despite repeated attempts by Redruth, the blue wall of players refused to be breached, and after an exchange of yellow cards for technical infringements, James Baker on the 52nd minute for Rams and scrum half Jack Oulton for Redruth on the 59th minute, it was Rams that broke to secure the first score in the 2nd half courtesy of loose head and Reading schoolteacher Jack Steadman, Seers adding the extras to give his side a 27-14 lead.

Despite a valiant attempt by the Redruth team, led by the excellent Ben Priddey, to get back into the game it was Rams that had the final say when some interplay put outside centre Stevie Bryant through a gap and a final pass to Joe Duffelen put the full back away for a sprint to the line for the final score of the afternoon, the game finishing 32-14 to Rams.

Head coach, Seb Reynolds, was full of praise for his side “it takes an incredible amount of hard work from everyone concerned to come to a place like Redruth and get a win, something we have never managed to do before. Our players were great today, but the win would not have been possible without the hard work of Matt Maxwell [Rams’ 1st team manager], the physios and our strength and conditioning coaches.” “I would also like to say a big thankyou to all our supporters that came down to Redruth to cheer us on”. Reynolds was also full of praise for his team’s opening try-scorer, Craig Nightingale. “We had to bring Craig into the squad last week due to injuries and this was his first National 2 outing for nearly 8 months as he was recovering from a broken hand. In truth, he probably wasn’t really up to match fitness and I have no doubt that he would not have wanted to have a full game, but in the end he had to play 78 minutes and he epitomises the great attitude in our squad because he gets on with his job and supports his team mates.”