Cornwall beat Newcastle Thunder for first win of 2025

Cornwall had lost games in the league, Challenge Cup and 1895 Cup before beating Newcastle Thunder

Cornwall earned their first League One win of the season as they beat winless Newcastle Thunder 32-22 in Penryn.

The win moves the Choughs up to seventh in the table and ends a three-game losing run in all competitions since the start of the season.

Thunder took an early lead before Henry Symons levelled in the 14th minute.

He got his second try eight minutes later but Sam Whinney and Nathan Conroy crossed to give the hosts a 20-6 lead at the break.

Bradley Llewellyn and Kye Jacobsen added further tries in the opening 15 minutes of the second half as Cornwall led 32-6.

Newcastle scored three late tries to make the scoreline respectable but could not haul in the hosts.

"No disrespect to Newcastle, it's one that we're supposed to win and that can bring its challenges for a young team," head coach Mike Abbott told BBC Radio Cornwall.

"But I thought we went about it really well, I thought our first half was really, really good, the way we built pressure

"We were really professional the way we went about it and I'm really pleased with that.

"The chat in the week was that the game might not go our way, we might do all these things we've said we'd do but then they could score first or it could be 0-0 after 20-odd minutes.

"But after they scored I just hoped that we could go back to what we spoke about and what we would do if this did happen and we did.

"I thought we just kicked on again, kicked them into a corner, our defence ramped up and we just built pressure on them, forced errors and then off the back of that we scored and put some quick tries together which was really, really good."