BOURNVILLE RECOVER IN JEKYLL & HYDE PERFORMANCE

Following an impressive victory over Burton, Bournville had the ‘long’ coach trip to Dunlop, a team fighting relegation. Dunlop are currently second from bottom and have had some heavy defeats in 2012 with losses to Walsall, Stratford and Sutton Coldfield. Bournville were still on a high after last week’s win and were looking to continue their decent run of form. Bournville made a number of changes in the pack with Rob Sigley, Dai Hallmen and Hesy Fakatou coming into the starting line-up and Rob Griffin moving to the back row. There was one enforced change with Alex Warner’s hamstring not sufficiently recovered from last week’s injury. Rod Petty moved to outside half with Steven Rice coming in a scrum half.

From the start of the match Dunlop looked like they were going to throw everything at Bournville and pinned them back close to their line. For the next 10 minutes Dunlop controlled the game with their forwards tight play frustrating Bournville of any possession.  As the tackles flew in Bournville conceded a penalty in front of the posts which the Dunlop fly half was happy to convert. Only minutes later Dunlop were back on the attack and Bournville looked a shadow of the team that had performed so well the week before. With Dunlop’s forwards starting to boss the fringes Bournville’s defence was getting stretched and allowed Dunlop’s flanker to sneak round a ruck and score the first try of the match and give them a 10 point lead.

After some inspirational words of encouragement from Rod Petty under the posts Bournville began to get their act together. They managed to keep possession and begin to create holes in the Dunlop defence. After a number of well worked phases Dean Bick popped up in midfield to power over the line from 10 metres out to get Bournville on the score sheet. Both teams then traded penalties in what was starting to look like a very even encounter. Bournville started to cause problems for this dogged Dunlop defence and after a lineout they went up too quickly to press the backs and Steven Rice darted through a hole to skip over the try line for another score. Bournville were still guilty of making silly mistakes and just before the end of the half they gave away a needless penalty from a lineout, which Dunlop’s fly half converted to give them the lead at half time, 16-15.

Bournville began the second half the way they should have started the first. They played with pace and purpose, really taking the game to Dunlop. Nick Southern and Rob Griffin were at the fore, driving Bournville towards the Dunlop line. After some concerted pressure on the Dunlop defence Robin Eatough glided past his defender to score under the posts, easily converted by Rod Petty. Bournville continued to press the Dunlop line with Nick Southern showing his pace from the base of the scrum to go past his flanker for the next try. Next came an excellent individual try, with Dan Barratt being on the end of a flowing backs move before rounding his winger and beating the fullback for Bournville’s 5th try of the match.

As Dunlop started to tire Bournville saw this as the perfect opportunity to apply more pressure and increase their lead. The forwards started to get the better of a large Dunlop pack and creating more gaps in their defence. After a number of phases Carl Colvin appeared in midfield to power past his tackler and score another try. Following this Dunlop’s flanker was sin binned for an off the ball tackle to make the end of the match even harder for them. Nick Southern continued to cause the Dunlop defence problems as he picked from a scrum just outside his 22 and ran straight through their defence, his pace taking him away from the covering tacklers. With just the fullback to beat Nick completed the simple 2 on 1 to give Paul Cox an easy run in to the line.
Bournville still weren’t finished there and Robin Eatough cut through the Dunlop defence, chipped ahead and then collected his kick for the final try of the match. This left the score at 57-16 to Bournville.

After the match talented fly half Alex Warner summed up the performance, “We turned up and got the 5 points we wanted. I think we suffered in the first half as we thought just turning up was enough to win the game. Credit must go to Dunlop who produced some good rugby and they have given us a few things to work on in training this week.”

Next week Bournville welcome Kenilworth to the University. Kenilworth have struggled his season and currently find themselves third from bottom and having lost the last 5 matches. If this Dunlop fixture is anything to go by Bournville realise there are no easy fixtures in this league and will be better prepared for next week’s fixture.

Bournville line-up: 1. Paul Coles, 2. Dean Bick, 3. Rob Sigley, 4. Dai Hallmen, 5. Hesy Fakatou, 6. Rob Griffin, 7. Thomas McIntosh, 8. Nick Southern, 9. Stephen Rice, 10. Rod Petty, 11. Dan Barratt, 12. Paul Cox, 13. Robin Eatough, 14. Carl Colvin, 15. Alex Ward, 16. Ian Coles, 17. Simon Homer, 18. Adam Coniff STANDOUT PLAYERS: Dean Bick & Steven Rice

Match report by Dicko. Match pics by Sully - click here.