County Championship: Cornwall miss out on Twickenham after Kent loss

Cornwall head coach Graham Dawe says his side's 34-31 loss to Kent at Camborne was "a hard one to swallow".

The defeat means the Black and Gold miss out on a Twickenham final for just the second time since 2012 with Kent topping the pool and going on to meet Lancashire for the title next week.

Cornwall led until the second half and had a try disallowed.

"They were pretty good in lots of departments and we didn't quite finish them off in the first half," Dawe said.

"We made too many fundamental errors," added Dawe to BBC Radio Cornwall.

"The try that was disallowed, it was a try because it didn't touch anybody, so legally it should have gone ahead, but it got wiped off and then we have momentum in the first half and everything's going our way.

"But it was chalked off and they came back and scored and put the pressure on and it was a mind game in the end."

Mike Austin's try put Cornwall 10-7 up before Matt Shepherd crossed after a quick throw, only for the referee to disallow it saying it had been touched on the way to finding the veteran back.

Shepherd did go over soon after before Rafael Dutta scored shortly before the break to see Kent lead 20-17 at half-time.

Cornwall restored their lead three minutes into the second half through Nicolas De Battista's try, but a 53rd-minute score from Alfie Orris and a try 10 minutes from full-time by Jake Hennessey put the visitors 34-24 up.

Sam Stevens went over for Cornwall in the final minute to set up a tense finish, but Kent held on to reach a final at Twickenham for the first time since 1986.

It means no repeat of 2022 when Cornwall beat Cheshire at Twickenham to win the title for the fourth time in six tournaments as a younger Cornwall side gained experience at county level.

"We produce players and we lose players and there are some players that have been around here for a long time," added Dawe.

"We just hope that they have the appetite to keep on playing, because we don't have a massive pool.

"We do try and find some young players to come in to the system, and a couple of players couldn't play this year for various reasons, so we've had to replace them with younger players.

"We haven't lost half the team from last year, but we've certainly lost a third of the team from last year, and that's perhaps too many to lose."