National 3 South West

OXFORD Harlequins bounced back from their opening day hammering to defeat Newbury Blues 30-8 for a bonus-point victory.

Quins were far more cohesive than in their 53-7 loss at Bournemouth and took the lead when fly half Alex Stevenson slotted a 15th-minute penalty from halfway.

Newbury immediately hit back with loose-head Ben Louisson driving over for a try.

A minute late, Quins had tight-head Ollie Barlow sin-binned, with fly half Oscar Matthews kicking the resulting penalty.

The hosts levelled on 22 minutes when Stevenson found flanker Alex Powell, who ran in from 35 metres.

Stevenson’s second penalty made it 11-8 at the break.

Quins found more fluency in the second half. They took the lead with a fine individual try from No 8 Adam Pearson, who received the ball in his own half, chipped ahead and won the race to touch down, Stevenson converting.

On 55 minutes, left wing Andy Noyce intercepted a loose pass and ran in try No 3 from 95 metres.

Scrum half Anthony Cope and Stevenson combined to send centre Tom Jelly side-stepping through for the bonus-point try, which Stevenson converted.

The boots of James Cathcart and Sam Stoop earned Chinnor a battling 12-5 victory over Redingensians at Kingsey Road.

Chinnor, who gave a debut to scrum half Max Mitcham, took the lead with an eighth-minute penalty from fly half Cathcart.

The match saw both packs jostle throughout, with Gensians’ former Wallingford lock Mike Turner prominent.

Cathcart doubled the lead from 50 metres ten minutes later and a second long-range penalty made it 9-0 at the break.

The visitors came out fired up with the wind behind them, but had nothing to show from ten minutes of pressure in the Chinnor 22.

When Chinnor did attack, centre Stoop surprised everyone with a 62-minute drop goal.

Full back Jevon Marsh collected the restart and ran straight back through the home defence for a solo try, but fly half Shaun Brown missed the conversion after a superb chase out from the posts.

Chinnor’s defence then held firm with tight-head prop Joe Pickett making an important showstopping tackle.