Camp Hill were the visitors to Wiggington Park at the weekend lying three places higher in the league than their hosts and fresh from a 62-10 destruction of Stafford a week earlier so were not likely to be easy opponents for Tamworth.
The home side started the stronger though asking questions of the Camp Hill defence which was breached in the ninth minute when youngster Liam Saayman made good ground on the wing and as Camp Hill committed defenders to halt his progress a nice inside pass from Saayman found Number 8 Martin Dearne in space for him to canter in for the opening try. Sid Wood kicked the conversion and Tamworth led 7-0.
Camp Hill grew into the half and enjoyed long spell’s of possession but Tamworth pretty much snuffed out any forays into the red zone keeping Camp Hill’s scoring opportunities down to a couple of long range penalty attempts both of which fell short of the mark.
It would be the home side that would double their advantage five minutes before half time as they made good progress through midfield including a sublime pass from Callum Render who was returning to the squad after injury had kept him out for several weeks the ball was recycled and the excellent Josh Roe bumped and barged his way through several attempted tackles to score under the posts Wood was again successful with the extra’s and Tamworth went into the break with a well deserved 14-0 lead.
The second half saw more lengthy periods of possession for the visitors forcing Tamworth into a truly heroic defensive masterclass not made any easier when they were reduced to fourteen men for ten minutes for a misdemeanour at scrum time. But they held firm despite Camp Hill’s onslaught and as the visitors grew more and more frustrated Tamworth struck the hammer blow that put the tie beyond doubt when on a rare visit to the Camp Hill half Tamworth turned the ball over and Second Row Connor McEntee found winger Jimmy Carroll with a nice pass out of the back of his hand and Carroll romped in beating the last defender for pace with ease. Wood completed a 100% day with the boot and the lead stretched to an unassailable twenty one points with only minutes left on the clock and Tamworth had an excellent victory against extremely tough opponents.
Afterwards Head Coach Nigel Hall said “ The lads put in a real shift today Camp Hill are a great side who don’t cough up the ball too easily. We probably only had five scoring opportunities and we’ve scored three of them but our defence was amazing especially when we were down to fourteen our line speed was on the money and we were committed in the contact area which we talked a lot about in the week and the improvement in that area was plain to see I thought today. We have a couple of tough games to end the season with but we’ve proven that we can cause an upset or two when we perform as we have today”
Final Score
Tamworth 21 Camp Hill 0