Drybrook Rugby Club

Launceston R.F.C 18
Drybrook R.F.C 12pts

As the mist rolled in from the coast and the light disappeared from the sky Launceston kicked off in front of home crowd full of Christmas cheer.
An early penalty against Drybrook gave the home team the chance to kick for the corner, and a well-rehearsed catch and drive saw them cross the line for the opening try of the afternoon.
Drybrook were uncharacteristically slow to deal with the ball at the breakdown and Launceston moved the ball wide for their winger to race in for try number two.
At ten-nil down with ten minutes played you would have thought things couldn’t get much worse but you would have been wrong in your assumption.
Launceston continued to press home their early advantage and laid siege to the Drybrook line. The Visitors defended well and eventually a scrum was awarded in their favour.
Mitch Bourne picked up at eight and broke clear. The referee however adjudged scrum-half Lucas Arresti to have blocked an attempted tackle and penalised him for doing so. While Drybrook were wondering what was happening Launceston took a quick tap and sneaked in for another try.
They added a further three points on the half hour mark to take their lead to eighteen points to nil.
At this point the home team and their supporters were thinking they had the game in the bag and it would not be long before they got another score to claim the bonus point.
The winds of change, however, were starting to blow and Drybrook were at last playing with some cohesion.

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Mitch Bourne broke out of defence and made good ground to set up a ruck on the home teams ten metre line.
The ball was fed back quickly and Harry Howard picked a fine line to break through the defence before passing to centre Danny Price who cruised in for Drybrooks first try.
Tom Treherne converted and the score was eighteen points to seven.
The remainder of the half saw Launceston on the attack but Drybrook managed to hold them out and go in at half time trailing by eleven points.
Drybrook made wholesale changes at the break and came out firing in the second half.
With Tim Stevenson at outside-half and Ben Large switching to the centre Drybrook had a far better balance and Large was able to show his capabilities in the position he is more comfortable in.
Good attacking play saw Drybrook earn a number of early kickable penalties, but they chose the option of going to the lineout in order to go for the try.
The did eventually get the golden egg when Carrado Correra latched on to a pass to go over in the corner.
The conversion drifted wide but the visitors were back to within a converted score of the lead.
Drybrook were now the far more dominant team and with Renton adding his ball carrying skills to the cause it looked as though the visitors could well be on the way to claiming a victory that had looked an impossible task in the first half.
What Launceston were prepared to do though was tackle their hearts out and try as they might

Drybrook were thwarted time and again.
Penalties that should have been kicked to keep the pressure on the opposition were kicked to touch and Launceston defended the driving mauls well enough to keep their six-point advantage intact.
With time running out Drybrook threw caution to the wind and ran everything, but time and again Launceston were able to repel the attack and held on to claim the victory much to the delight and relief of the Cornish supporters.
Drybrook were left to reflect on a poor start and poor choices in front of goal which could have brought them closer to the opposition and consequently won the game.
As they say though hindsight is a wonderful thing and as long as we continue to learn from our mistakes and play with the ability we showed in the second half, we should soon be able to turn these tight losses into victories.
Worthy of mention was scrum-half Lucas Arresti who played superbly on his Drybrook debut.

Drive on Dry!

Drybrook  – T Treherne, R Chapell, D Price, H Howard, C Correra B Large (Captain), , L Arresti, M Hale, C Williams, D Jelf, J Bourne, W Greenway, B Watts, K Frowen, M Bourne.
Replacements – T Stevenson, H Daynes, M Renton.