ANSELMIANS made the journey down A41 for a first ever encounter with Newport Salop and left satisfied with a 12-27 victory.

Saints were met with rain on arrival but the weather didn’t dampen the enthusiasm for the encounter.

Sitting in seventh place Newport have won three games this season, but have pushed everybody in all their matches.

Newport came out strong and with a very decent pack made headway up the sloping pitch towards the Saints line.

However Saints' well drilled squad held firm and with Joe Sanders turning the ball over, Saints drove towards the sticks where the rolling maul was pulled down resulting in a yellow card to Newport and a penalty to Saints, duly slotted by the reliable Nick Baldwin.

Within three minutes of the restart, some good driving pick and go from the increasingly dominant pack, gave Liam Sadler room to spin the ball out wide to Sam Cotgrave who finished in the corner after some great footwork saw him avoid the tackles from the Newport wing with the try again slotted between the posts by Baldwin.

Fred Clarke, immense in the loose, broke through a pair of tacklers on the halfway line slipped a pass to Theo Chapman on the other wing who used his pace to power towards the line and putting saints 0-15 up with Baldwin again slotting home.

The Saints pack now had their tails up, driving forward at every opportunity and  and dominate in the scrum forced another penalty in front of the sticks with Baldwin making it 0-20.

With five minutes to half time again the now dominant pack drove towards the line when the unstoppable Clarke broke off and drove through thee players to reach out and place the ball over the whitewash in the corner with the try again slotted by the reliable boot of Baldwin to leave Saints cruising 0-27 at half time.

The second half started with a fumble from the restart allowing a scrum to Newport and after a couple of re-sets Newport managed to cross the whitewash in the corner.

The next set of scrums saw the referee continue to penalise the scrum, resulting in a yellow card to  John Whittaker and down to 14 men, Saints then conceded another try allowing Newport to also convert.

The next ten minutes saw Saints hold out in defence with some excellent cover tackles from Sadler, Morley and Chapman not allowing the attacking backline any room.

The referee continued penalising the Saints scrum at every opportunity and carding replacement prop Niall Grant ,closely followed by Harrison Crowe for pulling a player down by the collar.

However, Saints held firm and when Grant came back on after his rest ,the referee carded Salisbury again for a scrum infringement. Again holding strong, the return of Crowe boosted the belief of the Saints team and they drove the ball up the pitch towards the sticks resulting in a penalty 40m out that was missed by Baldwin.

Saints stifled every attack by Newport but with the clock ticking over 50 minutes a verbal altercation between two players saw Crowe receive a red card before the man in the middle blew up on 53 minutes.

It was a well deserved MOM for Clarke, voted for by the Newport team and a four point away win which Saints second in the table, two points behind Rossendale but still unbeaten.

Thanks to Newport Salop for their excellent welcome and hospitality

Anselmians' next game is local derby v fourth placed Wirral on Saturday, November 30 with a 2.15pm kick off.