Darlington Mowden Park 52 Cinderford 22

MOWDEN Park chairman Mike Keeligan paid tribute to skipper Gareth Nesbit, who retired at the end of Saturday's final match of the season.

“When we asked him to be captain he thought long and hard about it,” said Keeligan, “He proved to be a very capable leader, whose game management on and off the field was excellent “It's a shame to lose a player of his calibre but we will stay in touch and he will help us with the coaching.

“Garry Law will also play a bigger part in the coaching, otherwise there will be no change on that side of things.

“We need a prop to replace Gareth and we need to find some new second rows. We don't know yet what Newcastle Falcons plan to do with Seb Ferreira, but if they release him we'd sign him tomorrow.

“Santiago Socino and Simon Uzokwe will be in the Falcons' academy next season, but we hope they will be available to us.”

Despite reports of financial losses at a recent extraordinary general meeting, Keeligan insisted there is no need to cut the playing budget.

“It will be roughly the same,” he said. “We appointed a board of non-executive directors who all have business experience, but it is not about raising funds. They will help us develop contacts and events.

“This has been a good season. We did well to finish as high as sixth considering the start we had.”

A bumper crowd of well over 1,000 turned out for the season's finale and were treated to an entertaining game in which the scoreline was an injustice to the visitors.

Already relegated, Cinderford made a carless start and went 17-3 down, but they were marginally the better team for the next 40 minutes.

Their desire to keep the ball alive often saw them give it away and they imploded at the end, conceding five tries in the last 15 minutes.

Despite being the game's outstanding player at Blaydon last week, Rory Duff had to settle for a place on the bench with Uzokwe being tried at open side.

He scored two tries to take his season's tally to 19, but man of the match was the versatile Callum Mackenzie, who can also play at open side but went on as a replacement centre midway through the first half.

Uzokwe finished an early catch-and-drive but the second try was a gift when a visiting forward made progress from a line-out on his 22, then hurled the ball back straight to Ferreira, who had a clear run in.

The next try came from a breakaway from Mowden's 22 with Uzokwe and Bruno Brave exchanging passes before the scrum half's clever chip to the corner gave lock Rob Conquest a farewell try.

Cinderford quickly replied with a good try and were threatening again when they conceded a penalty five metres from the line. Bravo took it quickly, shot away and found winger Peter Homan, who ran 70 metres to score.

With Chris Auld off through injury, Tomas Appleton took over the kicking and landed the first of his six conversions.

Cinderford did not convert any of their first three tries but had the gap down to 24-15 before Duff and Darren Fearn went on for the last 20 minutes.

The killer try came after a Mackenzie break when Jake Henry came off his wing to burst through the centre.

A similar effort took full back Jake Woodhouse under the posts following good work by Socino before Cinderford deservedly claimed their bonus point try.

In the 80 minute Mackenzie dummied through a gap to score and from the restart Talite Vaioleti burst away before sending Uzokwe over.

Having departed to a standing ovation five minutes from time, Nesbit took the microphone afterwards to say his farewells and thank the crowd for their support.