Match report by Geoff Ingham

Dee travelled to Gibson Park on Saturday to take on Grosvenor in their second league game of the season. There were a few changes in personnel from last week. Davy Skipp took his place in the middle of the front row, with the captain’s armband as Daniel Onstwedder missed out through injury. Owen Roberts started in the second row in his first game of the season. Oli Hamilton and Cohen Hurley formed the halfback partnership, Robbie Ingham moved into the centre and Danny McBride started on the wing. Alfie Thomas was making his Dee debut from the bench. Before the kick off both teams stood for a minute’s silence to remember Dee stalwart Wes Martin who tragically passed away during the week.

Grosvenor started the game with a strong wind at their backs and the Dee knew they were in for a difficult forty minutes. As expected, the home side started strongly and soon had the Dee pinned inside their 22. After only six minutes an attempted clearance was charged down and then grounded for the opening try which was also converted. Grosvenor continued their assault but were ably assisted by a litany of errors from the Dee. The lead was doubled after twelve minutes when a Grosvenor back kicked through after a loose pass by the Dee and managed to gather the ball just short of the line and dived over to score another converted try. Three minutes later, the Grosvenor outhalf hoofed the ball from inside his own half. With the strong wind behind, it looked as if the ball would go over the dead ball line, but the odd shaped ball had other ideas and stayed in play. From the resulting goal line drop-out the Grosvenor forwards went through several phases before crossing over to score. The conversion was added to push the score to 21-0.

The Dee managed to stem the flow for the next fifteen minutes, helped by winning several penalties with their dominance at scrum time. However, just after the half hour another dropped pass by the Dee allowed Grosvenor to score a carbon copy of their second try to push the score to 28-0. On the cusp of half time the home side scored their best try of the day when the ball was spun across their impressive backline and the winger scored in the corner. The conversion was missed but the Dee had a man sinbinned in the build up to the try.

The second half began with a 33-0 deficit and a man down. Grosvenor immediately took advantage of the numerical disparity and pushed the score to 38-0 when they used the extra man to score out wide. To their credit, the Dee did not let their heads drop and started to see much more of the ball. They eventually got on the score sheet with fifteen minutes to go when Cohen Hurley made a strong break and was stopped just short of the line. Dee were awarded a five meter scrum and after a couple of drives it was Chris Hamilton who crashed over. Hurley was successful with the difficult conversion. Five minutes later Dee scored a second try when Oli Hamilton broke through the defensive line and drew the fullback before offloading to the supporting Hamilton who ran in for his second try. Hurley again converted to take the score to 38-14. With the minutes ticking away the Dee were penalised inside their own half and Grosvenor decided to kick for goal to run the clock down. The successful penalty was the final score of the game with the final score 41-14 to the home side. A difficult day for the Dee who made things harder for themselves with too many mistakes in the first half.

They will have to put some hard work in during the week if they are to reverse their fortunes next week when they welcome Cavan to Donaldson Park, k.o.2.30pm.