This Sunday saw Sidcup u16`s traveling down the A2 again, to play Dover RFC.
With recent away games at Canterbury and Thanet, we really are racking up the miles. On the plus side these long car journeys enable us to spend quality time with our teenage charges, and discuss their hopes and aspirations for the future, talk over any schooling or friendship issues they are encountering and generally forge bonds that will last a lifetime. Or……. they sit in silence, ear buds welded in, heads buried into phones, scrolling though videos and using data at an alarming rate ! Either way, it was a lovely day for rugby, and as we have never played Dover before, there was a higher than usual level of anticipation.

In the preceding week Dover had been quite candid as to the strength of their team, so it was a mixed team of 17 that travelled, (in silence) down to what is one of the nicest grounds we have visited, and that, along with the fact that they offer a full English before kick-off, are reasons enough to make this a regular fixture.
Dover were already warming up when we ran out and first impressions were that they were quite a big side and seemed to know what they were doing. Joe “Burpee” Pressney went through a warm up whilst I considered the option of a second bacon sandwich, but being an athlete decided against it. To plug a few gaps and with Dover’s guidance on their team strength in mind, we mixed it up, and had 2nd rowers throwing in at the lineout, centres at 8, flankers in the 2nd row etc, whilst still showing Dover the respect they deserved and retaining the spine of the team, to give some degree of continuity.
The match was a one sided affair and we found ourselves 31 points to nil up after 20 minutes, so we made another raft of positional changes, with the half ending 48 to nil.
Alan Baldry, the Sidcup U16`s field catering manager, had bought oranges for both sides at half time, but as he approached the Dover team he stopped short, and later confided that they were getting such a boll@#*ng, he didn’t want to interrupt, so just put their oranges on the ground, and retreated.
The second half was more competitive, but we still managed to run in 5 more try’s, with the game finishing 77 to nil. Scorers were varied and spread across forwards and backs and included 1 x 4 try tally and 1 x 3 try.
To their credit, at no point did Dover give up and afterwards we congratulated them all for their tenacity and to a man they were respectful and congratulated us on our victory, which is something that cannot be said for other teams we’ve played and beaten this season.
Rugby is so much more than just playing the game and Dover’s attitude is to be admired. They admitted afterwards that they had a pretty good idea they were going to get beaten, yet still they fielded a squad of 22, played hard, relished the challenge, and maintained their temperament throughout.
The drive back was slightly more vocal and during our usual post-match debrief, we concluded that it was a good performance with everyone doing what was asked of them, with the only obvious mistake being the decision not to go for the second bacon sandwich (lesson learnt).

We are back in league action next week Sunday (12th Feb) at home to Maidstone, and hope to continue the great form we find ourselves in .