Fixture

Dowlais VS Senghenydd 24/09/2022 Match Report

Score:

Dowlais: 38

Senghenydd: 10

An excellent first win of the season for Dowlais this week with a 38-10 victory against Senghenydd at home.

Despite the wide score gap left by Dowlais by the end of the game, it didn’t look like things were going to go that way at first. With Senghenydd overpowering the home defence and netting themselves an early try, it looked for a moment like Dowlais had a long game ahead of them.

But that early break in the opening minutes ended up being the peak of the visitors’ attacking efforts for the majority of the game, as the unconverted try would end up being their last points of the first half.

Dowlais shortly struck back with a try of their own, and from there they didn’t stop. Over the course of the rest of the half, the boys would strike time and time again against the Senghenydd defence, rarely giving them an inch, with what few real attempts the opposition had ending with them still sitting at five points.

On the other hand, Dowlais would go on to score four more tries by the end of the first forty minutes, all of them done with some impressive driving strength from the forwards and some excellent ball handling and passing from the backs. This brought their total up to an impressive five, earning them a bonus point for what was now looking like a very likely victory.

Of Dowlais’ five first half tries, the first was scored by Rhodri Martin, the second by Kyle Prosser, the third by Sion Martin, the fourth by Tom Griffin and the fifth by Ceri Morgan. Of these, the latter three were also converted by Sion Martin, letting Dowlais close the curtain on the first half with 31 points, and an impressive 26 point lead.

It should go without saying that spirits were very high going into the second half, with any reservations or nerves about Senghenydd launching a successful counterattack being very small. And surely enough, the visitors’ scoring successes across the second half were very minimal.

But similarly, Dowlais also slowed down a fair bit this half. Compared to the non-stop assault of the first forty minutes, they would only score one more try this half, scored by Will Thomas and converted once again by Sion Martin.

It could certainly be said that things became a bit looser for the home side in the second half, with many more slip-ups in the ball-handling department and a noticeable hike up in the number of penalties, with Dowlais even going down to thirteen men at one point thanks to two yellow cards.

But in the end, no grand, thirty-point counterattack came from Senghenydd to take back the game, but they did manage to earn themselves one more try at the very end, finally breaking through for their second notch on the score board with an unconverted try.

With this, the game came to close with a 38-10 bonus point victory for Dowlais.

While overall an excellent result for Dowlais after two home losses to start the season, with some excellent attacking and defending having been refined from the positives of their previous games, there are still some areas to improve.

Most of these come from the slight dip in quality in the second half. Most of this can likely be chalked up to a feeling of security and safety, an admittedly earned one by that point in the game with an over thirty point lead.

While none of the little slip-ups or missed scoring opportunities had a major impact on Dowlais’ chances of coming out on top, it would have been nice to see the boys keep up the tempo from the previous half, as excessive as doing so might have been.

While the second half performance was more than satisfactory for this game in particular, a tougher side, or one that was tailing behind them with a slightly shorter gap in points, might have been able to use these mistakes to catch up and overtake them, especially the gaps in the field sprung up by the two yellow cards.

But these are small blemishes on an overall fantastic performance, one that will hopefully set the standard going forward.

We’ll just have to see starting next week as Dowlais takes on Blaenavon for their first away game of the season.