A winning start to the season but not the start I wanted. For two players to miss the departure from the club at 9am, on top of injuries to three others, was simply not good enough and an extremely irritating start to the day.
In terms of the performance – loads of possession and territorial advantage but little penetration would be the best way to sum it up. The pack started in thumping style and two early drive mauls should have led to scores. The concerted pressure eventually resulted in a try by Thomson, whose straight line running caused Dartfordians problems throughout. He powered his way over to give us a score after 8 minutes and Stewart converted. A nasty off-the-ball incident, where a number of punches were landed on Hunter, took away a bit of the enjoyment of scoring our first try of the season. Maidstone players began to focus on retribution rather than getting on with the game! Jenkins threatened twice to add to the score, before a combination of Wetjen and Jenkins looked to have scored another – the referee disallowing for a double-movement? Dartfordians had barely got into Maidstone’s half and right against the run of play, they scored with 5 minutes to go to half-time. Poor midfield defence saw a break, which was nicely finished wide out for an unconverted try. To their credit, Maidstone went straight back upfield to power in a number of phases of clean ruck ball before the referee penalised Dartfordians for offside. Hunter took a quick tap and never looked like being stopped as he went over for another converted try right on half-time.
The second-half was more closely contested but with Maidstone still controlling much of the ball. Poor decision-making and a lack of cohesion in the backs resulted in a number of positional changes being made, but without further success on the scoreboard.
The forwards did relatively well but most definitely are capable of much better. The set scrum proved fruitful despite some dubious penalties against and the lineout looked impressive for the most part. The co-ordination of drive mauls, however, was far from impressive and work is needed here in terms of effective communication. The half-backs both had off days and the outside backs rarely threatened to combine to deliver the scores our possession deserved. This brings me back to discipline and this time to pre-match warm-up where concentration was lacking – all of these issues could be seen during the warm-up and we merely continued in the same vain into the game. Unfortunately we were not helped by a continuous flow of penalties against, many of which were contestable but also many of which were down to stupid offsides, where we should have known better.
All-in-all, not the sort of performance that we are now capable of and hugely disappointing given the amount of effort expended in training the guys during the summer. Going back to the start of the day, although discipline has improved considerably in the last year, it still consistently surfaces in various formats, whether it be lateness, attitude, verbals or people doing their own thing before and during training and matches. Please note that we have a chance to move onwards and upwards and individuals will not be allowed to stop this from happening.
To finish on a positive note, we won a game fairly comfortably without being at our best and with guys missing. Let’s see how we are performing by the end of October.
