Some More D's

The youth team travelled to Birchgrove with only 17 players, with 10 players absent either from illness, injury, working commitments, a college tournament, and the very odd case of cantbebothereditus, a common complaint from teenagers, that has been seen some cases within the ranks of the clubs senior players, apparently its very contagious since if you try to text or phone when you have it, it can actually be passed on to the coaches who need to know you have it, perhaps if they caught it too, they might not give players the opportunity to play in the positions they want to, today they had that chance.
On a crisp sunny day, Dunvant arrived later than anticipated due to some players being delayed obviously having put their clock back a day early, perhaps for the rest of the season they may pay attention to meet times, because preparation is everything!
Anyway back to the important stuff, Dunvant turned up and promptly completely ignored the mistakes they were guilty of in their last outing, going through the phases giving the ball width and making ground against a very determined Birchgrove side for whom their scrum half was a gutsy determined player, who throughout won turnovers for fun, and was by far their standout player. Their discipline was excellent and we dominated the first 25 minutes, being 12 points ahead after tries from Gareth Williams and Alistair Hewins, but slowly toward the end of the half a few of the old habits started to creep in, penalties were increasing and the belief that we could smash our way out of trouble returned, however a new D emerged defence, which throughout was superb, and has been all season, where in the previous 6 games we have conceded just 12 tries, 6 in one game.
The half time came at the right time, and at the start of the second half a further try came from Alistair Hewins, however Birchgrove upped their game as Dunvant continued to give penalties away and went down the narrow channels of attack with the backs turning into spectators, except for the odd occasion when the ball was used and the backs made in roads almost immediately, a couple of them have phoned the NSPCB (National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Backs), alleging neglect, only 5 minutes before time did Birchgrove get a well deserved try, in the final few minutes though Dunvant again raised their game, but a familiar result occured when the forwards broke the gainline only to ignore the backs who were wide open, and indeed with the clock in overtime deep in Birchgroves half a decision to kick the ball off the park when we could of pressed for another score was puzzling.
However a well deserved win should give us heart, if we again look to make improvements and work on our D's more W's should come,as the players know we can make great inroads this year, lets try to do it in style.