Moseley 41 Launceston 17
Uncomplicated? This was about as artless as rugby can get.
Moseley set out to win their match early, had done so after a mere ten minutes and Launceston were playing catch-up rugby for almost the whole of the rest of the afternoon.
And playing it badly, one might add. Moseley spent a hugely enjoyable 80 minutes simply slapping them around.
Hard to believe that Launceston had won this fixture by a distance in Cornwall last September. Hard to believe that men get paid for playing the vague, distorted rugby that Launceston came up with here.
Actually, the contest was effectively over after only two minutes. That was as long as it took for Moseley to find the first attacking position and for Ollie Thomas, with a quite delicious pass, to put Greg McDonald into a gap and to then add the points.
This wasn't just a try, it was a try with nobs on and it gave Moseley a superiority complex which Launceston could never really argue with. They tried a predictably muscular response, intimidated no one and with Thomas kicking them some superb positions, Moseley began to strut.
McDonald, playing out of position in the centre, showed his natural inclination, that of a No 10, to chip cunningly to the left corner where Tom Warren, taking a difficult bounce, scored the second try that Thomas converted from touch. Game set and match.
Launceston were snatching at their rugby for the whole of the rest of the game, made so many basic mistakes, turned over so much ball, that Moseley's victory became a formal process. "We had some good bits and pieces," said John Beale, Moseley's director of rugby afterwards.
And that's really all it took. Moseley didn't need a game plan. They were vastly the better side in midfield, saw their chances early and took them. Or most of them.
Beale reckoned that they should have scored ten tries rather than the five they ended up with. But Beale was impressed with his side's first half defence, with Chris Holder's play in the centre and with the line-out. And he thought that Thomas's first half kicking had laid all the right foundations.
It was Thomas's sort of game. Apart from his 18 points, there was a lot of ball to be used against itchy opposition.
Ideally, Moseley might have liked to have seen a greater spread of the ball but the chances were all made and taken in the middle.
Steven Perry, a rather laborious fly- half for Launceston, kicked a penalty goal after 13 minutes but Thomas answered that and then, following some tank-like running from Charlie Daniell, took a break from making openings for others and ghosted his way through a gap of which, it has to be said, there were many.
His conversion made it 24-3 at half time and as they'd had time to analyse matters, and a mild breeze to aid them, Launceston might have been expected to mount a measured second half. Those thoughts lasted eight minutes.
Warren had limped off shortly before the break to be replaced on the flank by Nick Southern. Who was now put away by Thomas and over the next 40 yards Southern was to remind us that while his preference is for wingforward, he can also run like a wing.
None of the Launceston backs could get to him, Thomas added the points and the game was entering its final quarter before the Cornishmen could get in a blow.
Perry probably, usually, plays more effective games than this one, in which he managed to turn slow ball into very slow ball. But now he found a telling pass to send No 8 Stuart Williams over and if his conversion suggested a rally, that possibility did not occur to many.
Certainly not to McDonald, who did another No 10 thing by dropping a goal in the 72nd minute, or to the local maestro, Thomas who laid on a super last try for Holder.
It was a try that reminded one old romantic of how the French used to do it years ago. Thomas made his break and instead of streaking for the line, decelerated and looked around at his options. It was lyrical stuff, played at a trot and when he'd examined all the possibilities, the fly-half felt the urgent arrival of Holder at his right shoulder and that's who he gave the scoring pass to.
He converted, of course, but the last word went to Launceston's scrum-half, Shaun Hawkey, who ran very cleverly for a try that Richard Stenhouse, the visitor's most dangerous back, converted.
MOSELEY: A Binns; J Aston, C Holder, G McDonald, N Bressington; O Thomas (rep M Mountford, 74 min), G Taylor; P Coles (A Low, 70), A Caves, B Buxton, D Hallmen (M Samra, 74), R Stott, C Daniell, M Evans, T Warren (N Southern, 45).
LAUNCESTON: J Hill; M Olima, D Morris, R Stenhouse, M Lacey; S Perry (N Bridge, 60), S Hawkey; J Bolt (I Langridge, 48), D Risdon, W Reed, D Kimberley (G Smith, 48), J Wilce, N Burnett, S Williams (M Heynes, 70), W Sprangle.
Referee: Mr T Fisher.
