A powerful and increasingly dominant performance by London Cornish saw them to a 5 try bonus point win at Effingham & Leatherhead's Brown's Lane HQ in London 2 South-West on Saturday. The win was a huge improvement on many of the pre Christmas efforts as the exiles continue to welcome back more and more of their large squad to action. This win saw the return of Will Carew-Gibbs, Mark O'Leary, Matt Johnson, Ed Atkin, Craig Chatley and Oli Low, all of whom will have a significant part to play in the second half of the season. For all the returnees elsewhere, Cornish had a 2nd row crisis, which had seen Harry Somers, Ben Davenport, Joe Bough, Pete Calvert and Dave Mills all ruled out for a variety of reasons, meaning Mark Osei-Tutu had to step in as emergency cover for only the second time in his career.

Given the torrential rain in recent days, the top pitch at the Eagles ground was in fine nick, and a large crowd, bolstered by a former players lunch, witnessed the visitors play into a freshening wind in the first half. The home side was first on the board with a penalty on 3 minutes, but an early portent of their travails to follow was that they lost their first scrum against the head, and their set pieces came under constant pressure throughout. Though their diminutive left wing threatened with a run early on, Effingham found themselves penned in the top left hand corner of the pitch for a long period following a Josh Allison kick being knocked on around the 15 minute mark. Cornish kicked a series of penalties into the same corner, and each time the home side transgressed, until eventually Osei-Tutu broke off and crashed over for the opening try. The conversion attempt into the wind simply fell short. Cornish hammered away on series of occasions in the next period, no 8 Simon Brading and blind side Johnson at the heart of much of the good work, and after a Tom Jeffery run and subsequent penalty being kicked to 5 out, the visitors thought they had scored again when Tom Ievers drove over, but the referee was unsighted and could not award the try. It did not take long to make amends however, as a Brading run and Ben Ievers drive took the ball to the shadow of the posts, before Atkin spotted a gap in the defensive line and took a low aim to dive over for the try (picture 1), the conversion attempt slamming into an upright and down on the wrong side. The half-time whistle sounded shortly afterward, Cornish 10-3 to the good.

Though now playing with a very strong wind at their backs, Cornish were on the defensive in the opening minutes of the second period, the home full back taking a great line down the blind side on half way and cutting in towards the posts only to be downed and then held up underneath the crossbar by the exiles full back Josh Allison. Allison transgressed in trying to retrieve the ball and was binned, though the Eagles elected to run the penalty only for Jeffery to drive their wing into touch and the danger to be averted. Effingham were made to pay dearly for their profligacy two minutes later, when they misfielded a superb Tom Hupfield bomb, were penalised for offside, lost a man to the bin, and at the scrum saw Brading power over wide left for a well deserved try (picture 2), converted from the touchline by Hupfield. The home side saw a long range penalty hit the crossbar and drop the wrong side on 50 but nearly conceded again when Jeffery handed off a man before his inside ball to Tom Ievers saw the open side downed 5 out before the ball was scrambled clear. With their lineout malfunctioning badly, the home side had little option but to run into the wind, and they enterprisingly tried every time they could, but they had to produce a huge tackle count and on the heavy pitch they were beginning to tire. On 56 Carew-Gibbs hit Ben Ievers on the home 22 right hand side, and a maul was set that thundered to about 5 out before O'Leary spun out of a tackle and planted the ball over the whitewash for the bonus point try (picture 3), Allison driving the conversion across the wind and over to stretch the lead to 24-3. Cornish brought on Chris Anstey, Oli Low and Phil Dale in quick succession for Johnson, O'Leary and Atkin to freshen things up, and after a scrappy period of play in the gathering gloom and with rain now falling steadily, it took a cross field kick by Hupfield, gathered by Ben Ievers and fed to Stefan Duda to walk over for the final try (picture 5) to end the scoring sometime beyond the hour mark.

Effingham suffered from the lack of a specialist hooker throughout this match, and with their normal 10 also out with flu, will certainly pose more of an attacking threat from this point on than they did on this occasion, particularly when they can get their rapid wings into the action on drier ground. Cornish did not pick up any injuries during the game and were able to get significant game time into a number of players who really needed it. The club have now been joined by former Wasps, Perpignan and Samoan International Dan Leo on the coaching side, and his influence is likely to be more visible as the season draws on, his work with Osei-Tutu last Wednesday a fascinating one session crash course on how to to turn a no 8 into a lock!