Dee travelled to Newry on Saturday for their penultimate league game of the season. There was added incentive to win this fixture as they were playing for their colleague and friend Pete Causby, who had taken unwell during the week and had just returned home from hospital on Friday.

There were a few changes to the Dee’s line up with Jed Nelson making his debut in the second row. Callum Moore was in the back row in place of the unavailable Chris Hamilton. Robbie Ingham started at scrum half while his sibling Sam was in an unfamiliar role at centre alongside captain Matthew Stockton.

Thankfully the showers stayed away for the whole of the game although a stiff breeze was blowing across the pitch. Newry were reduced to fourteen men after only six minutes when one of their forwards was shown a yellow card. The Dee quickly capitalised on their numerical advantage when Bradley Burnham went over in the corner after Daniel Onstwedder had shown some Simon Zebo-esque control before offloading to his winger.

Back at full strength the Newry forwards worked themselves up into the Dee 22 and crashed over to level the score. As the game entered the second quarter the Dee went ahead. The ball was gathered by Aaron McKee who made good ground before passing to Stockton. The captain beat a number of defenders before putting Onstwedder in for a score. Adam McGrath made sure of the conversion to give the Dee a 12-5 lead.

The lead was extended five minutes later when Burnham was freed up on the wing after slick hands by Sam Ingham. McGrath converted again to push the score to 19-5. Dee seemed to switch off at this stage and allowed Newry back into the game. Firstly, they were awarded a penalty try when the Dee collapsed a maul on their own line and on the stroke of half-time they scored again out wide to make the score 19-17 at the break.

Newry continued where they left off and took the lead only minutes into the second half when they managed to score a converted try to lead 24-19, with the Dee shown a yellow card in the process. This seemed to reawaken the Dee and they began to put some good phases together. On the hour mark the lead changed hands again when Adam Russell darted in from the 22 metre line and McGrath was successful with the difficult conversion.

Ten minutes later the Dee pulled further ahead when Onstwedder broke through the Newry defence to score under the posts. Although Newry tried to cut the deficit the Dee’s defence held out until the referee blew for full time.

The team and an impressive number of travelling support then enjoyed the host’s hospitality. Man of the match this week was beyond any doubt as Daniel Onstwedder had another outstanding game and capped it off with a brace of tries. Next week sees the Dee welcome Coleraine to Donaldson Park for the final game of the season. K.o.2.30pm