Stafford Colts welcomed Dudley Kingswinford Colts to the county ground on Sunday for a friendly match in ideal conditions for running rugby on the AGP.

Stafford started the match strongly, which made quite a nice change, and put Dudley K under a lot of pressure. Strong running from the forwards put Stafford in some great positions early in the match but turnovers at the breakdown from Dudley K defense initially kept Stafford at bay. However, when the Stafford backs started running the ball into the wide channels and stretching the Dudley K defense the dead lock was eventually broken when Spencer Latham forced his way over in the left hand corner. The forwards and back combined for the second Stafford try when Ben Dodd, standing out wide, fed the centres who in turn put Connor Mculloch into the wide channel for a well worked score. The third try was scored by Ben Dodd from a lineout close to the Dudley K line and the resulting driving maul saw him touch down in the right hand corner, James Milan adding the conversion. First half scoring was completed when Ben Dodd, again standing out wide, got on the end of a backs move and brushing off the Dudley K tacklers touched down in the corner. Half time score was 22 – 0 to the home side.

Unlike Dudley K who had only 1 traveling sub, Stafford made 7 changes at half time. The wholesale changes seemed to knock the Stafford side out of their dominant position in the match and things were a lot more even in the second half. Dudley K brought more intensity to their game in the second half and following a long period of pressure on the Stafford line were able to score a try of their own. The game then turned into a bit of an arm wrestle with Stafford not able to find the flowing rugby they showed in the first half and Dudley K stepping up with more determined defense. Then just when Dudley K were threatening to score their second try their stand-off threw a loopy pass trying to miss out some Stafford defenders and it was intercepted by Billy Jones who ran three quarters of the length of the pitch to score under the posts. James Milan added the simple conversion and the match ended with a final score of 29 – 5 to Stafford.

Stafford played very good rugby in the first half with forwards and back combining well, the ball was reaching the wingers and the Full back was joining the line creating overlaps on several occasions. The forwards were dominant in the scrummage and winning their throw-ins at the lineout. However, for some reason Stafford were not able to carry that form and cohesive rugby on into the second half. Maybe it’s a question of fitness or maybe a case of combining players that have only recently joined the team and not been to many training sessions. But for whatever reason Stafford played better rugby in the first half than they did in the second half of the match.

Overall it was a convincing win for Stafford over a slightly under strength Dudley K side played in a good spirit by both teams. There is one more game before the Christmas break, the re-arranged away league fixture at Walsall. Lets see if we can carry on the performance from the first half this week into that game. Train well lads and lets see if we can complete this league campaign with an away win.

Mark