Honiton Hawks under 12's played their first game in 14 months when they travelled to Sidmouth for a derby encounter on Sunday morning (2 May).

Due to a couple of injuries the Hawks had a squad 11 available – Arran Hansford, Charlie Wheeler, Digory Nash, Hamish Terry, Harry Evans, Jack Hodder, Kyle Moore, Liam Webber, Logan Symons, Miles Salter and Will Parris.

Sidmouth had similar numbers so two halves of 20 minutes each were played.

The Hawks were quicker out of the blocks, showing excellent physicality and ball handling, scoring four early tries.

However, the latter part of the first period belonged to Sidmouth who replied with two soft tries as a consequence of some missed tackles, along with a further two tries as a result of some excellent build up play to leave the scores level at half time.

The second half started with an exchange of tries to take the scores to six a piece before Sidmouth pulled away to an eight tries to six lead moving into the closing stages.

The Hawks then replied with two scores of their own, the final one with the last play of the game, to leave the final score at eight tries all.

In the end a draw was a fair result and both teams should be congratulated for contributing to a physical encounter, which was played fairly and in a good spirit.