Centre of Attention

Having had their winning streak broken just before Xmas when a poor first half performance gave away a game that was our for the taking the omens were mixed for Dunvant, with only a bare 15 of players luckily all in their correct positions we started our warm up in good spirits however shortly before Kick off Aaron aggrevated an injury and withdrew and Lewis arrived from his slumber just before kick off to make it 14 a side after 1 minute, Llangennech also being light on numbers. We had only trained once in 3 weeks and had 2 centres who had last played in our earlier cup match V Mumbles, having been away in Uni, but Jack and Ben have played together for 10 years but it took the rest of the team a while to realise the potential we had and to use it
From the kick off we dominated and were very keen to take Llangennech on up front and would dominate our lineout and spoil a lot of their lineout throughout the game though scrums were not so easy to master, partly due to some test match reffing apart from the feeds which had to be slide rule straight.
Early doors we did show a lot of rustiness and must improve our reaction to situations and maybe not be hesitant with both support players and support players needing to be switched on, something to work on. From the start Ben morgan was using his strength and speed to carry ball from deep up the pitch, and the forwards through Duffy, Ryan , Alfie and Gwillym were all carrying well and we were getting good forward ball though at times we were under pressure from an opposition who seemed to be very quickly up in midfield. From a move on the 10 yard line under pressure Jack Thomas received the ball he first hit contact bouncing off the first tackle, then under pressure from 2 other tacklers he shrugged off one and handed of the other must be because he's so ripped, and he found himself in space to sprint away and score, the resultant conversion was missed. Within 10 minutes our continued domination led to a penalty 10m off the 22 yard line straight in front of the posts, this time Jac Ace Ventura Newbury was successful. The rest of the half was littered with poor decisions with a series of poor kicks when ball in hand would have been a better choice as well as some poor decisions when in space, a lot of this can be put down to rustiness and was talked about at half time, and it speaks volumes that we all recognised what we were doing wrong, unfortunately we could not change what other people were doing wrong.
In the second half it was more of the same and we started to dominate further , and were rewarded for some close quarter play which saw Alfie Thomas power over, again the conversion which from behind the posts was lined up wrong was missed ,we were rewarded with an unexpected penalty when Llangennech who were getting a bit miffed with the man in the middles, as Bobby Windsor often recites you can think what you want about the ref, but don't tell him, not only a penalty but a red card, this time the penalty sailed through Jac was now finding his range. We were then on the end of a period of pressure though this was almost broken when sleeping beauty started to make some excellent decisions with some long deep kicks from 15, and then a lovely timed pass that gave Dan Watson a dart to the line, only excellent covering saw him pulled up 3 m short, from a subsequent lineout we made a couple of wrong decisions taking the forward route when a wider ball was screaming out to be delivered. Again we were forced back but Ben, Joel and Jack ran the ball back strongly however a series of penalties saw us back on our own 5 yard line for Max to spend 10 in the sin bin, we think he didn't realise we were playing in Green and Yellow because I swear he was on their side more than ours. With a series of scrums and lineout 5 minutes out our defence was outstanding with Duffy, Antonio, Gwillym, Ethan, Alfie and Ryan stating you will not pass, and when they moved round the fringes Ben was like an extra flanker, and when the moved further out Jac, Jack and Ben were able to snuff out the midfield attack with Joel cutting anything further wide off, it was in the midfield that their attack broke down, and we hacked the ball downfield to clear our line. Again we drove forward with Rip Van winkle Lezzi taking a flying lesson in a tackle and a penalty into the corner saw runners hitting midfield and Alfie powered over for his second, in the same place as his first, Jac this time converted successfully. With time running out we again pressed but a kick back downfield found the arm of Ben Morgan who ran back 50 yards and with the line beckoning he was brilliantly tackled but a beautiful off load off the deck to Ben Ley saw him dive over to the left of the posts, this again was converted by Jac. With 2 minutes left we again pressed and were now playing with confidence, unfortunately another score didn't materialise. We now look forward to the rest of the season and hopefully will raise our game evne higher