Melbourne Win in Cup

Melbourne 2nds went off to play Dronfield 2nds in the Derbyshire 2nd team Cup, Dronfield are in pennant league 1 and we are 3 leagues below them in Pennant 4, but we are pretty near the top of our league and Dronfield are bottom of theirs. A lot of Dronfield 1st team players having left to Chesterfield at the end of last season, (they have more swapping in North Derbyshire).

The management had elected to take a smaller squad due as it was a long way to go and be a Sub, this almost backfired due to a couple of last minute cry off, but veteran penalty giver Nick Parkes stepped in a the last moment.

This was also a debut for Devon Illiffe (he’s quite good) at scum half, and we had an a back row of short people, Joe Bryant, Steve Bell and Jake Walker, we sweated a bit on the arrival or Jake and Scott, but they both found the gorund with minutes to spare.

The game started on a perfect day but with the run in Dronfields eyes. The Dronfield side looked like the same mix of youth and experience that we had but they did have some bigger lads. Melbourne edged the initial engagements, our miniature back row were all over the place and we could turn over ball, the scrum was a mess, Melbourne had the better of it but the ref constantly gave foot up or not straight, our backs looked more dangerous than Dronfield and Fulli was kicking well.

After 12 minutes from one of the first scrums to be completed Fulli placed a nice kick onto the Dronfield half, Will Butler ran onto it and made good ground and from the resulting Line Will caught good ball and as had happened to a lot vs Donnington the week before we drove over the line with Jordan Touching down for his 6th try of the season! 5-0

Straight from the restart Melbourne were a bit rubbish we did not catch the kick and Dronfield got into our 10 metres, there then followed 5 minutes of constant Dronfield, with lots of line outs and Penalties, Melbourne really defended well with lots of turnovers and Ed Haymes smashing down people twice and driving them back and Tony Day putting a few runners into reverse. We had a few chances to clear but we did not and eventually a large Dronfield player broke free to score 5-5

Melbourne then began to play very well, a good run by Will Butler saw us win a penalty and Fulli converted 8-5

Within a few minutes Melbourne got a free kick, Devon took a cheeky one to himself and nipped over to score 15-5, not bad for a debut!

After 30 minutes Dronfield missed a kick to touch, Scott ran it back and fed Tommy Line who ran in a beautiful try 22-5 Melbourne continued to pile on the pressure another catch and another drive 29-5 at half time, with Jo Bryant getting the last try.

Melbourne were pretty rampant, Booko came on for Nick Parkes and we re started with the sun in our eyes.

All of he first half, Alex Lloyd had been making great runs and our back row of miniature attack dogs had been messing with everything.

It was quite end to end for the next few minutes, Melbourne did most of the hard work but had a bad habit or passing to Dronfield guys in mid field (Booko) and this allowed Dronfield to attack.

Melbourne were the next to score Tommy Line broke through fed Booko, and from the resulting breakdown Ed Hames appeared like a stocky farming Exocet to slam dunk his first senior try for Melbourne 36-5

28 minutes into the 2nd half Devon set off on a great run handing off a series of much older players to feed Booko in support 43-5

Even I was feeling confident that Melbourne would win, but from them on in, we fell a sleep a bit, try scorer Ed Hames missed a tackle to let Dronfield score again 43-12, Jordan was sin binned for handling on the ground (he was made a scapegoat for others sins)

Steve Bell swapped with Nick Parkes for the last 20, I dont want to feed Steve’s monsterous ego, but we probably missed him and Dronfield scored twice more to make it 43-22 at the final whistle.

We won and we have the pleasure of a Semi Final Game vs a team from a much higher league but hopefully we can get through another round and have a final day experience!!

A really good performance by the whole team, Devon was great in his first game, Ed had his best game for the Seniors, Back row was really good, if we had had them against Donington we would have won, If Will Butler was 3 stone heavier he would walk into the firsts , Tony day made a huge effort to get to the game after a big game. All the backs played well and were really dangerous the highly educated back three of Alex, Alex and Tommy Line played really well, and Scott and Dean did not put afoot wrong. (Fulli Nick Parkes, Booko were lovely as well)

MVP loads of good performances but I am going with Joe Bryant who turned over a lot of ball and put Dronfield on the back foot in the first tem minutes of the game.

Dronfield played well but cut back inside a lot, which played to our back row, the ref was very good but was clearly used to matches with fewer errors and slightly more professional players who did not make so many errors.

Next week back in Pennant action vs Bingham at Home!!!!!