Derby day joy for Piddle Parkers

The visitors’ set-piece play was dominant throughout, especially in the scrummage.

Pershore started the game at a frantic pace, putting phases of play together, cleverly using their big ball-carriers to make in-roads into Upton’s 22.

Eventually, the pressure told and infringements at the ruck allowed Lewis Dolphin to convert two penalties.

Pershore attacked the blindside from a scrum on Upton’s 22, the forwards rumbled on and Upton conceded a penalty at the ensuing ruck.

Scrum-half Sid Hirons took a quick tap and popped the ball to Karl Evans who crashed over.

Upton ran the ball from their own try line, the ball was quickly transferred to the dangerous Alex Plimlow, who cruised around the defence to score. The difficult conversion was kicked.

The Piddle Park side then began to put their phases of play together, with Alex Peel, Toby Grace and Chris Copson making hard yards, before a neat inside pass from Dolphin to Adrian Hanson saw the latter score under the posts. Dolphin converted.

After the break, Upton narrowed the gap with a penalty.

From a line-out, the Pershore forwards carried the ball on before it was fired out wide where Matt Harwood out-paced his opposite man to touch down.

From the re-start, Pershore kicked downfield and the ball was knocked on under the posts. Number eight Martin Hope picked up at the back of the scrum that followed and took two defenders over the line with him. Dolphin converted.

With Pershore seemingly cruising to victory, Upton threw caution to the wind and began to run everything. They were duly rewarded as Pimlow exploited a nervous defence to score two quick tries, both of which were converted.

With 10 minutes to go, Pershore finally wrapped up the victory when a series of forward drives from a line-out enabled Hope to to cross the whitewash for his second try.

With time running down, another hand in the ruck close to Upton’s line, enabled Dolphin to kick another penalty to seal a well-deserved win.