Crewe and Nantwich RUFC beat Evesham at home 46-27 in an entertaining, high scoring encounter at the Vagrants in Willaston.
Before the game, the club was saddened to hear of the death of a club stalwart Garry Davies who died on Saturday.
After a disrupted warm-up, with top try scorer Tom Fenney and Rhys Price both pulling out late on with injuries, Marcus Dockery and Matt Wright were called into the starting 15.
It was the visitors who started the brighter, dotting down wide in the corner.
Not long after, Crewe lost Dockery to injury with Jacob replacing him, meaning a reshuffle in the back line.
Crewe opened their account with a penalty landed by Logan Lynch to close the gap to 3-5.
Shortly after, Lynch scored Crewe’s first try of the game in the corner after some flowing build up play.
Lynch added his own conversion to extend the lead to 10-5.
Crewe began to dominate and scored a further three tries in the first half, securing the bonus point.
Ben Applin scored on his debut, rounding off a fine handling move.
This was followed shortly afterwards by a fine individual try by Josh McShane.
Applin then scored his second try before half time to take the score to 27-5 at half time.
The second half started in a similar fashion to the first. Evesham were quickly out of the blocks and scored an early try.
But C&N responded strongly with some dominant carries by John Stuart and Tom Roberts.
As holes started to appear for the Crewe side, Applin scored his third, a hat-trick on debut.
Noah Tulip scored a deserved try for his hard work over the past 12 months, a perfectly fitting send off before he goes to university.
C&N’s final try was scored by Tom Roberts in usual fashion, running over rather than round tacklers.
At this point C&N had a healthy 46 – 10 lead with Lynch having a fine day with the boot, converting four tries and one penalty.
However, credit to Evesham who produced a strong finish to the game scoring three unanswered tries in the last 15 minutes to reduce the overall deficit to 46 – 27 at full time.
Match sponsors, Unette, awarded Man of the Match to Ben.
Crewe and Nantwich sit 4th in the league after this result and look forward to travelling to old friends Hereford next week.
The second team lost at home in a tough game 11-36 against Knutsford.
On Sunday, the Ladies triumphed 31-05 over Southport Women in their last warm up fixture before the league starts next weekend.
(Report by Jimmy Creighton and Graham Jackson, image by Tony Pennance)
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