Melbourne swept aside at Dudley

Melbourne travelled across to the West Midlands facing an impressive Dudley Kingswinford. The team selection was once again tweaked with further injuries resulting in three new faces coming into the squad promoted from the A squad. Guy Cooper, Danny Lawson and Jonny Vincent making their Midlands 1 debuts. Walker moved to hooker and Nicholson into tighthead, Cooke-Rogers moved to the row with Mat Smith at blindside and Lockhart at open side being a further five changes to the forwards. In the backs Hancock moved to scrum half and Page to fullback, Watts was drafted into inside centre and Stuart onto the open side wing. All in all a total of 11 changes from the previous week.

Melbourne started brightly receiving the kick off and played some good phases. However, this was short-lived as DKW showed why they are in the top three and scoring points for fun week in and week out. Strong running lines and excellent support play saw them rack up an impressive 38 - 0 lead in the first half.

The second half was far more competitive and Melbourne upped there performance and fought for inches and hard yards. Despite there efforts they were unable to break their duck even though a couple of promising situations were created. Dudley continued to play with real tempo and purpose and extended the score to 59 - 0.

Once again Page and Percival were excellent joined by Watts and Walker too. The opportunity to expose more players to Level 6 rugby is a positive in the long term and they all settled well and gained valuable experience.

Fair play to Dudley they were mightily impressive with the ball in hand and probably the best rugby playing side we have faced this season. On top of that their defence was resolute. We have a well earned rest week ahead of Hereford at home on November 25th.