SWINDON St George produced a scintillating late rally to claim a 38-26 victory away at Oxford Cavaliers at the weekend and rubber-stamp their qualification to the West of England Super Fives semi-finals in the South West League.

After building up a slender lead at half-time away at their near neighbours, a red card after the restart threatened to derail St George’s ambitions and allowed Oxford to edge ahead on the scoreboard.

However, Ben Whincup’s troops dug deep in the latter stages and a trio of late tries ensured they turned the game around and travelled home down the A420 with the spoils.

St George ran in seven tries in total, with Josh Williams, Rhys Evans, Liam Rowe, Henry Beer, Connor Tomley, Jack Daynes and Josh Verity all getting over the whitewash.

The win is Swindon’s second from three in the Super Fives, following last week’s 34-24 success away at Somerset Vikings, and they round off the pool campaign at home to All Golds on Saturday.

Head coach Whincup said: “We have had to get two away wins in the last two weeks to get through to the semi-finals, so it’s a great effort from all the lads.

“Now we want another win this weekend to finish top of the group – that is the next challenge.

“It was a tough game at Oxford. We went into half-time 16-14 up, but then we had a man sent off and it rocked us a little bit.

“That naturally gave Oxford a bit of a lift and they started to bring the game to us and they got themselves in front.

“We stuck to what we had been doing and still managed to execute our game plan, and we scored three tries at the end to get the win, which was a great effort.

“It was tough circumstance, so it is credit to the boys for digging in and getting the win.”

St George host All Golds at Supermarine RFC in their final Super Fives group game on Saturday, with the visitors currently topping the standings as the only side to have won all three matches so far.