LETS PLAY A GAME

Armed with a very simple game plan, and with enough firepower Dunvant should have had more than enough for Birchgrove, its quite a simple rule you play to your strengths and not the oppositions.
Our strengths our pace and perceived maturity in our backs, their strengths their excellent pack and scrum half, it was built up as a game where we should have been able to stretch Birchgrove and avoid going up the guts and keeping it tight, well that was the instructions, unfortunately we didn't listen, and when the game broke down into a stop start game, which was not allowed to flow, as unfortunately the play didn't match up to the test match that the official in the middle thought he was in charge of, where minor technical offences were penalised and advantages were rarely applied, both sides were becoming frustrated, but in fairness the stop start game suited Birchgrove who are the jackle kings. At half time Dunvant had been told without any holds barred that they were playing into the oppositions hands, where at times trying to play our way out of defence was leading to numerous penalties deep in our half, and had put us beyond on the scorecard, and where aimless little chips over the top played into the hands of the jacklers, the game needed game management.
Lacking a regular 9 Dunvant enployed Gareth Banfield in the second half who started to get the backs going, however overlaps were often ignored, the hands and passing were deplorable, some players had already reached the letter Y in the game of donkey by the end.
Despite this our defence had been solid and good defence turned over Birchgroves attempts to escape their half, quick thinking from Alistair Hewins put Matthew Dodd away to gallop in under the posts, the conversion followed. At that stage the team for the first time in the game listened to the coaches advice and when a scrum just outside our 22 led to clean ball for our backs a kick downfield was followed up, any other time in the season the ball would have not bounced, instead it sat up over their full backs hands into Jack Thomas hand, for a saunter under the posts. 14-3 up with 8 minutes to go, guess what we decided we didn't want to play donkey any more just in case we would drop the ball, instead we let it bounce, that still counts though, as the kick off wasn't fielded a penalty ensued, quickly taken a yellow card followed when they were tackled too soon, inexplicably the ref didn't play advantage which would have seen Bircgrove score in the corner, a far less kickable conversion, however when they powered on following the penalty they scored after being in our 22 for only one of a handful of times the try was easily converted. That was fine 7 minutes to go, the kick off went deep but midfield, giving a far more attacking position, a kick from their 10 which seemed innocuous was again left to bounce and scooped up by the opposition, driving forward they recycled, and for some reason when their second row ran a better blocking run than an american footballer, their 10 attacked deep into our 22, we defended well, and with the tackle made and the first man in from Dunvant jackling for 3 secs no penalty followed, we were given another chance when the ball was spilled in the tackle 5 metres out, seemingly going forward, for it to be snaffled by Dunvant, when a hoof up field would have been a better option as there were no Birchgrove players behind their attack, however good ball had been secured and a clear ruck formed,however if you hold onto the ball you can't drop it, but you will get penalised, and we did, quickly taken Birchgrove scored and with the conversion led by 3, with 2 minutes to go. This time the kick off was deep to the right, with less limited options a penalty ensued 35 minutes out on the 15 yard line, a kick that is easy for a left footed fullback, no a decision to kick would be the easy option, instead we decided to go for the attacking lineout, which at any other time in the match would have been a reasonable choice, unfortunately our player sin binned was the hooker, guess what the first real turnover against us in the lineout happened.
Well guess what next training session there will be passing drills, and also a test about listening to instructions, the first one is come to training and a pint for the first player who knows what PTYFS means.