Bromley RFC VS Dover RFC

BROMLEY GET BACK TO WINNING WAYS

I have to admit I was not at the game on Saturday so this report may be wildly inaccurate – not unlike most of my match reports. On Saturday Dover were the visitors to Barnet Wood Road and they arrived off the back of a good win over local rivals Deal and Betteshangar pre Xmas. In the corresponding fixture earlier in the season they had the measure of Bromley in the first half but in the second half the roles were reversed and Bromley eased away to a good win. Saturday’s game followed a similar pattern. For the first twenty minutes or so Dover were pretty dominant and Bromley struggled to get out of their twenty two never mind their half. It was only a terrific defensive display that kept them in the game at this stage. It was not that surprising as the home side still have many players missing through injury an unavailability and there were new combinations in the forwards and backs struggling to gel initially. Ultimately the pressure told and with a penalty on twenty five minutes and a converted try just before half time Dover were 0-10 ahead. To add to Bromley woes a yellow card was issued at this stage and they would turn round to play up the slope. Omens did not look good.

However, with a few tweaks and some wise words the home side came out with a bit of devil and intensity and ripped into Dover. The away side were now on the back foot and the referee was playing a mighty tune on his old tin whistle resulting in three yellows for Dover and another one for Bromley. Mixed up in this Bromley began to rack up the points with Powell T sniping one in from the back of a scrum, his brother James, off the bench, produced a trademark break and released the support to score, a penalty try and apparently a worldie of a try by Hawkins with the ball going through multiple hands for him to take the glory. The final score was 39-17 and nobody watching would have said that at halftime. Bromley produced an inspired forty minutes of running rugby. On the day Laws in the backs and Pullen in the forwards had strong games but credit to all of them as they had a tough few weeks before Christmas and this was just the tonic they needed.

The Griffiths family had another special day with dad Steve heroically playing forty minutes and sons Johnny, returning from injury, and Alex on the wing playing together in the first team – what a memory for them.

The second team travelled to Sevenoaks and they had the same issues as the first team with a front row crisis and multiple others unavailable. They took a pretty young team with a couple of exceptions. Sevenoaks are riding high in the league and this looked like a pretty daunting task. However, they played brilliantly and only fell at the last losing 24-28 taking a losing bonus point. To put it into context nine of the team who played in their last game did not feature. Similarly in the first team at least twelve players were not available for selection with at least half of them regulars. Hopefully next week we can get a few more back but all credit to the guys that have stepped up – they have done a great job.

Next week the firsts will be in the charabang heading off to the seaside to play Thanet Wanderers, the seconds are at home to Askeans and the thirds are away at Bexley.