Dee welcomed North Down neighbours Holywood to Donaldson Park on Saturday for a League encounter in Championship 3. The Dee were able to welcome back Ray Dobson and Daniel Onstwedder to the forward pack and Matthew Pentland moved to scrum half to replace the injured Matthew Mingout. Danny McBride started on the wing with Jack Murphy slotting in at full back.

Dee got off to a fast start when Matthew Stockton took a quick penalty and made good ground before passing to Nathan Boyd who had an easy run in to score. Pentland converted to make the score 7-0.

Six minutes later a punt up field was superbly gathered by Chris Hamilton and a couple of phases later Hamilton showed running skills by side stepping the last two defenders to score under the posts. Pentland converted again to push the score to 14-0.

Dee continued to dominate and the third try soon followed when a good move up the right wing was finished off by Onstswedder with Pentland again converting. With only 22 minutes gone the Dee secured the bonus point try when Boyd scored his second try of the day out wide. The difficult conversion was missed but the Dee now had a 26-0 lead.

On the half hour mark they extended their lead when Ryan Butler, playing in his 50th game for the first fifteen, crashed over to score his first ever try for the Dee, much to the delight of his teammates.

To their credit Holywood had not given up and as the half drew to a close they enjoyed their first visit to the Dee 22.From a scrum five metres out the ball was fed to their outhalf who managed to force his way over for a converted try to leave the halftime score 31-7 to the Dee.

The third quarter was a messy affair, the moist conditions not conducive to running rugby. Neither team got the upper hand in the plethora of scrums that took place but Dee’s lineout faltered on several occasions thereby wasting several opportunities to score.

The Dee looked lethargic during this period and only came to life again on the hour mark when Adam McGrath executed an excellent floated pass that sent Robbie Ingham over in the corner. A couple of minutes later Stockton rounded his opposite number to score in the same corner. Both conversions missed narrowly to leave the score at 41-7.

Dee scored their final try on 73 minutes when Ingham went through a gap in the Holywood defence to score his second of the day. This time Pentland made no mistake with the conversion.

Holywood, however, had the last say when they scored in the corner in the last play of the day to leave the final score 48-12. So, five more points in the bag for the Dee but still lots of areas where improvements can be made so lots to work on in training.

Man of the match this week goes to Ryan Butler who put in another excellent performance in his 50th match, capping it off with a rare score.

Next week the Dee travel to Holywood for the return fixture, 2.30 k.o, before enjoying the Christmas break.