Hartpury’s last-minute dash denies 14-man Exiles

HARTPURY snatched victory from London Scottish from the final play of a scrappy game as full-back Mike Wilcox crossed to give the college side a second successive league win.

Scottish looked to be holding on despite going down to 14-men when back row Danny Kenny was sent-off for a bone crunching high tackle in the 65th minute but the visitors ran from their own five-metre line at the death to score.

The win moves Hartpury into the top half of the table for the first time.

Director of rugby Mark Cornwell told TRP: “We haven’t played well, we know we haven’t, we hardly got anything going in the first half and when we did we coughed it up after two or three phases.

“Our penalty count was too high and I was quietly pleased we went in at halftime ahead as we didn’t do anything. We looked really rusty and having two cupweeks has clearly affected the performance and we are very lucky to come away with the win as Scottish deserved it.”

An early charge down by openside Mat Gilbert put Hartpury close to the Scottish line and several phases later centre George Boulton offload to Luke Eves gave him space to score.

The Exiles spent the next 20 minutes probing Hartpury’s try-line but were unable to get any points with wing Nick Scott and fly-half Jake Sharp coming up marginally short.

They had to wait until the half hour for their first points, a penalty for Sharp, who repeated the trick just before the interval.

Scottish, however, finally got rid of their white-line fever after the break, Sharp was at the

centre of the attack as the blue shirts pressed the Gloucestershire side’s line until scrum-half Ed Hoadley got over.

On the hour mark Hartpury replacement James Williams was just short of the line after going past three defenders.

Kenny’s red card after tackling wing Ed Sheldon looked the galvanise the Exiles, with Sharp again at the centre of their attack before five scrums in front of the posts failed to produce a score.

But in the closing seconds Hartpury No.8 Darrell Dyer kicked up a loose-ball from a scrum to start a 95-metre move finished by Wilcox after Sheldon went close.

Scottish coach Dave Morris said: “It’s a horrible feeling as I’m so proud of how we rode the game out. We got asked to use it at the scrum and just needed to kick it out. We need to look at ourselves there after we did all the hard work.”