Stafford Colts traveled to Dudley Kingswinford for a friendly fixture in lieu of not getting selected to play in the national colts cup.
Traditionally fixtures against Dudley K have always been very tight affairs and that how this match turned out. Stafford put DK under a lot of pressure early on but failed to cross the try line then DK forwards had several goes to break the deadlock but errors close to the Stafford line allowed the visitors to clear their lines. After 23 minutes Stafford were awarded a penalty in center field and Seb Conaghan slotted the ball between the posts. Then with time running out in the first half Stafford were awarded a penalty and kicked for a lineout on the DK 5 meter line. A good take from Oliver Downe, who was excellent in the line-out all match, resulted in a driving maul and Charlie Kirby touched down. Half time score was 0 – 8 to Stafford.

Second half saw DK have much more of the ball and the territory with Stafford struggling to get out of their own half. Stafford struggled to add shape to their game as they had done in the first half, clearing kicks were not finding touch and as a result DK applied the pressure on the Stafford defense. However, some excellent scrambling and last ditch tackling from both forwards and backs prevented the home side from crossing the try line. DK did score a simple penalty from In front of the posts after a high tackle from Stafford on 30 minutes. However, following the restart the home side were not allowed to get back into the Stafford half and the game ended with the score 3 – 8 to Stafford.

This was a very tight game were both sides struggle to make clean line brakes due to excellent scrambling defense on both sides. Mistakes from both sides were not capitalized on and errant kicks were not run back effectively. It shows that the work that we have been doing in training on defensive line speed and shape when chasing the ball is working and making us a hard team to score against. We just need to keep focus on executing our strike moves correctly to give ourselves more opportunities to stretch good defenses out wide.

Next up for the colts is our first home league fixtures against Evesham next Sunday. See you all at training.

Mark