Coventry’s Achilles heel, a dreadful away record, returned to haunt them once more, as an inept performance at the Brickfields Recreation Ground saw the side fall to a 10th consecutive defeat on their travels.

All this when the passion & desire to be within one step of Twickenham should, in itself been a great motivator. Sadly & in particular for the faithful travelling support, very little of that was evident and once more, it was a long & painful journey back to the Midlands.

Yet very briefly, Cov threatened much better, for from the initial Plymouth kick off, the ball was ran back & for the opening two minutes, several phases of ball were run at Albion. Once the ball was spilled however and how many times did that occur during the game, it was a totally different story. Not once during the reminder of the half, admittedly playing into the breeze, were the Blue & Whites able to string together another meaningful period of attacking play.

Yet the half time margin against was only 8-0 bringing hope for better things after the break. A dreadful kick off however seemed to set the continuing tone & although late on some moves finally saw passes stick, there was never enough flair or invention to break down what was frankly nothing more than an efficient home side. The forwards mostly held their own overall & certainly more than combated the famed Albion driving maul, but outside them it was disaster day. Passes dropped, poorly distributed & wrong lines of running & options being taken. In reality only wingers Kurt Johnson & Sam Montague, in for the injured George Dixon , could be exonerated from any real blame from amongst the backs, they simply saw virtually no ball & how the powerful Dixon was missed.
After that early Cov sortie into home territory, Plymouth’s Van Eyk slotted an easy 10th minute penalty for a home lead never to be lost. As Cov soon began to commit too many unenforced errors with limited possession, first on 19 minutes a burst from Albion scrum half Lewsey was only just held & then an attempted catch & drive driven back. After 27 minutes came the only try, with Plymouth’s top try scorer Sestaret flying over in the left hand corner, Van Eyk failing with his conversion, as he did with a head on penalty attempt 7 minutes later.

From 8-0 down, one looked to Cov to impose themselves, but not too much changed. Van Eyk struck another penalty 3 minutes after the break awarded after offside to set the wrong tone again for the visitors. Ben Russell then landed two penalty kicks for Cov to peg the margin back to 11-6, but despite some slight improvement in attacking options, the Midlanders could find no way through, Van Eyk with penalties three & four sealing a comfortable, if rather unspectacular home win.

At the death, Coventry ran a penalty from deep in defence, it finished with a knock on & totally summed up a frustrating afternoon.

It is exactly 20 years since Coventry last lost a Cup quarter final, on that occasion away at Wasps. Sadly, it is going to be a little longer following this EDR Energy National Trophy tie before they have another opportunity of reaching the semi final stage.

Coventry. Russell ( Capt), Montague, Geraghty, Sanders, K Johnson, Dorrian, Walls, Treston, Friswell, Brits, Campton, Nimmo, Venter, O’Connor, Rheeders.
Replacements; Rimmer, Protherough, Tonkin, T Johnson, Binham.
Not used; James, Toft.
Coventry. Penaly goals. Russell 2
Plymouth Albion. Try Sestaret. Penalty goals.Van Eyk 4.

        John Butler