PUDDLETOWN 13 NEW MILTON II 15

STRUGGLING Puddletown were made to pay for ill-discipline and were edged out by high-flying New Milton at Greenfields.

On a cold, still afternoon, it was a closely-contested game between the Villagers who sit second from bottom of the league and New Milton who are fourth from top.

The visitors scored first with a penalty goal after Puddletown were caught offside at a ruck. The hosts struck back with a Tom Yeatman penalty to level the score at 3-3, the visitors having been adjudged to be not releasing at the tackle.

However, New Milton took the lead again with a well-worked 5m line-out move to score a converted try in the corner to make it 10-3 to the visitors.

Puddletown pressured the New Milton line with some good passages of play — this forced the visitors offside 10m out from their own posts.

The men in red chose to run the resulting penalty and captain Jez Beale took a short ball from Lucas Frizzle to power over to score to the right of the posts. Tom Yeatman neatly converted to level the score at 10-10.

Puddletown played the remainder of the first half with 13 men, after having two players yellow-carded for back-chatting the referee.

After the break, Puddletown were restored to their full compliment, but the visitors’ left-wing felt the wrath of the referee after kicking out a Puddletown player and he was sent to the bin for 10 minutes.

The home side took advantage and New Milton were once again forced offside in front of their own posts. Tom Yeatman slotted the penalty goal for Puddletown to go in front for the first time in the match, 13-10.

Both teams cancelled themselves out for most of the second half, but approaching the 80-minute mark, New Milton applied some heavy pressure to the Puddletown defence.

A series of penalties were awarded for Puddletown indiscretions on their own try line.

New Milton took the option of tapping and running and an inevitable gap appeared for them to break through and score an unconverted try to win the game.