Thornbury (home) 24th September 2016

thornbury-home2

south-west-oneDrybrook 32pts
Thornbury 13pts

Both sides took to the field full of attacking intent. Thornbury shaded the first fifteen minutes and scored a penalty when Drybrook were adjudged offside. This spurred a swift response from the home side when, five minutes later, captain Large chipped the defensive line, caught his own kick, deftly fed hooker Howells who sold an outrageous dummy to get past the opposing winner and then win the 25 metre race to the line.
5 – 3 to Drybrook who continued to press forward at every opportunity. However, over enthusiasm from Price, handling on the floor, brought a yellow card. Thornbury kiced for touch and drove over from the line out to retake the lead 5 – 10.
Thirty-five mites into the half, prop Hale was replaced by Nightingill and as the forwards drove towards the Thornbury line, a penalty was awarded and duly converted by the ever reliable Treherne, 8 – 10. Five minutes later another Drybrook attack was halted by a high tackle. Treherne again converted the penalty.

Half Time:
Drybrook 11pts
Thormbury 10pts

Two minutes into the second half, centre Cooke scored a magnificent solo effort, running through a tight defence to score. Treherne added the conversion to give the home side a 18 – 10 lead.
Ten minutes into the half, Mullane replaced second row Nott who had been performing stirling work in a pack that was constantly pressurized by the away side.
Both sides continued to attack, swapping penalties to no avail until, eventually, Drybrook conceded three points to close the scores to 18 – 13.
At this point, Nightingill was replaced by Hale.
Drybrook forwards responded immediately and after several phases of play, released Cooke who scored his second try, duly converted by Treherne. 25 – 13.
Two minutes later, scrum half Combes chipped the defence, caught his own kick and fed flanker Peaper who scored in the corner. Treherne converted with a magnificent kick from the touchline. This was the final score of the game giving Drybrook a well deserved 32 – 13 victory.

Drybrook 1st XV: M Hale, A Howells, A Woolfe, W Greenway, G Nott, S Peaper, D Price, M Bourne, J Combes, B Large, M Baldwin, J Cooke, H Darche, H Howard, T Treherne.
Replacements: L Nightingill, B George, L Mullane.

south-west-pilotCleve 2nds 26pts
Drybrook United 26pts

Drybrook returned from Cleve with a credible draw.
The game was played with uncontested scrums due to prop forward Craig Boughtons car breaking down on route.
Drybrook were first on the scoresheet, a driving maul took play near the Cleve line when Dean Jelf crashed over & Andy Milner knocking over the conversion.
Cleve sprung into life, with several offloads in the tackle took play into the Drybrook 22.
A quick switch resulted in the Cleve 9 going over in the corner.
Cleve’s ability to offload from the tackle was proving problematic for the Drybrook defence. Two further tries for Cleve threatened to take the game away from Drybrook. Near the close of the first half, the impressive Kristian Taft stepped his way through the Cleve defence to bring the score to 26-14 at half time.

Drybrook had use of the strong wind in the second half & used it effectively through fly half Rhys Evans & Andy Milner to keep Cleve pinned back in their own half.
Next on the score sheet was Taft once again, for a converted try.
With 10 minutes to go a clearance kick from Evans looked to be going over the dead ball line but Taft managed to beat the bounce of the ball to touchdown for his hat trick, unfortunately the resulted conversion rebounded off the post.
Cleve did have a chance to steal the victory with a penalty in the 80th minute but the kick came up short.
Man of the match was centre Kristian Taft for his try hat trick.
Next week the 2nd Xv welcome Cinderford stags to the Mannings for their opening fixture in the south west pilot league.

Drybrook United XV; Dean Jelf, Andy Warren, Connor Auker-Howlett , Jon Pritchard, Greg Collins, Connor Parry, Jack Whiting , Ben Warren, Andy Milner (Captain), Rhys Evans, Will Bailey, Kristian Taft, Luke Roberts, Jack Freeman, Rhys Gardner.
Replacement; Jason Jones

gloucester-4Drybrook Extras 24pts
Glos Old Boys 2nds 27pts

Drybrook 3rds took on Gloucester Old Boys for their second fixture of the season and their first match at the Manning’s for 2016/2017.
From the kick off Drybrook seemed to be the stronger side with two tries in the first 10 minutes giving them the lead 12-0.
The first try came from Steve Skelton who proved to be an asset in his first game for some time.
The second try came from an interception from Simon Rugman to which he added the extras.
Drybrook relaxed and a few errors let Old boys cross their line twice to bring the score back to 12 -10.
Drybrook worked hard to close the door on the visitors and defended well and then turned defence into attack by moving the ball wide to the hands of outside centre Jack Davies who powered through for a well worked try and the conversion made the score 19pts -10pts.
With only 5 minutes left on the clock till half time Old Boys scored a converted try to keep them in the hunt at 19pts -17pts and then just before the half time whistle blew a penalty was awarded directly in front of the posts to give them the lead for the first time.
The second half kicked off with both teams working hard for territory and possession but the introduction of a few fresh legs began to turn the tide towards the visitors.
A second half interception try increased the Old Boys lead to 19pts -27pts and the visitors were able to sit on this lead until the last three minutes when Matt Freeman added his name to the score sheet for Drybrook but it was too late in the game to have a real impact.

Drybrook Extras XV; James Smith, Iain Murphy, Stephen Virgo, Steve Turley, Mitch Williams, Nik Wakeman, Matthew Freeman, Richard Roberts, James Colwell, Chris Rawlings, Sam Grant, Simon Rugman, Jack Davies, Kane Hale, Steve Skelton.
Replacements, Craig Lancett, Ian Rawlings, Adam Colwell, Steve Rawlings, Neil Ricketts.