NATIONAL 2 SOUTH Redruth 20 Bury St Edmunds 20

Bury St Edmunds returned from their longest away trip of the season to Redruth with two points following a hard-fought and exciting match which ended honours even after over 17 minutes of time added at the end of the game.

The first scrum of the day after two minutes was won by Bury and the trend for the Wolfpack to dominate in the set-piece commenced.

However it was Redruth who opened the scoring after 13 minutes with a penalty.

The Bury defence was strong all match, playing with clarity and purpose.

A crunching tackle from Mikey Graham caused Redruth to knock-on and from the resulting scrum, Bury won a penalty which was kicked to the corner where the visitors caught and drove, with two further penalties being conceded by the home side. Eventually the pressure was too much and the ball was fired out to Bury full back Cam Ritchie who sidestepped a defender to score in the corner. Nick Perez was inches away with the conversion.

The line-out was going well for the visiting team, Will Scholes making a nuisance of himself, stealing the ball at a Redruth throw in which was cleared well into their territory by scrum half Jann Hasenlechner.

Bury were down to 14 men after 31 minutes when hooker Jordan Argerich was yellow carded for a ‘no arms’ tackle. The penalty following this infraction was converted by Redruth’s Aaron Simmonds and the score was 6-5 to the hosts. Bury scored next when a Redruth forward was penalised for a ‘values of the game’ infringement and Perez’s kick was successful. Just before half-time, after a period of pressure on the Bury five metre line Redruth skipper Richard Brown scored with Simmonds converting with an amazing kick as the home side led 13-8.

Bury now had the wind behind them when the second half got under way and spent a considerable amount of time in the hosts 22 and after several penalties, their ten was sent to the sin bin for repeated offending.

Scholes scored Bury’s second try after a powerful drive to level it up at 13-13.

A short time later, with the referee playing advantage for another penalty, wing Finlay Sharpe caught a beautifully flighted Perez kick, diving at full pelt to catch the ball and score in one movement. The subsequent conversion was successful and at 57 minutes played, the score was 13- 20 to the visitors.

Franco Catuogno was yellow carded for a dangerous tackle but the hosts could not score due to fantastic defence and Bury cleared.

With seconds of the 80 to go, Redruth were awarded a penalty at a scrum on half-way and this was the turning point of the match.

They kicked into ‘Hellfire Corner’ and an extraordinary period of play resulted. A further Bury sin binning of Ben Cooper for coming in at the side of a maul saw Bury down to 13 and they valiantly defended their line from the waves of Redruth attacks. Dave Coutts was also yellow carded for an offence at maul time and astonishingly Bury were down to 12.

This led to uncontested scrums, with Redruth scoring having fired the ball to their fly half Kevern who dived in under the posts making converting his own try easy and with 17 minutes 5 seconds over the 80 on the clock, the game ended 20-20 much to the delight of the baying home crowd.