Dover got back to winning ways with an impressive 30 – 10 victory against a Deal team that had a narrow 2 point victory over Dover earlier in the season. Like Dover, Deal rely on a small player base and asked if they could play four over age players to enable them to field a full team. Rather than cancel the fixture, Dover were happy to agree to this request, and kicked off in a determined mood. Usually Dover are slow starters, but following another tough midweek training session, they were aggressive from the start and looked to play all the game in the Deal half. This was soon to pay dividends as, when Deal were forced to concede a penalty, fly half Harry Moore slotted the kick to give Dover an early lead. The forwards seemed to be relishing the contact, continually driving Deal off the ball, both in the scrum and open play, with Matt Sanders, who had an outstanding game today, leading by example, and punching some big holes in Deal’s defence. With Deal in disarray, another forward having a good day, Keiran Phillips, drove over the line for the first try. For the rest of the first half, Dover continually probed, looking for another try, and any number of players could have scored with Deal frantically holding out, before Harry Moore spotted a gap and sprinted through to give Dover a 13 – 0 half time lead.
The second half continued in the same vein, with Deal continuously under pressure, and when Tom Elliott collected a cross field kick, he did supremely well to fend off a couple of tackles before sidestepping the full back to increase the lead. Next on the score sheet was inside centre Jordan Annakie, who is developing a good understanding with fly half Moore, continually running varied attacking lines and creating space that he is able to exploit. Dover made some replacements to ensure everyone got some game time but were still playing the better rugby and Joe Cooper soon extended their lead with his usual agressive style of rugby.
The last ten minutes of the match saw Dover reduced to fourteen men as Cooper was yellow carded, and Deal took the opportunity to add respectability to the score line, which to be fair they deserved, as they ran in two late tries.
This was a good win for Dover and will give them confidence to take into the final third of the season when they can hopefully continue their improvement.
Matt Sanders put in man of the match performance today, but with others, including Angus Killen, George Smith, Jason Mallory, Jordan Annakie, and Joe Dennis looking impressive, and with all players having match time it was tremendous team performance.


Team: Aarron Coleman, Angus Killen, Matt Sanders, Robin Jenkins, Kieran Phillips, George Pugh, Jack Tong, Keiran Hopper, Matt Ribbens, George Smith, Joe Cooper, Jason Mallory, Harry Moore, Jordan Annakie, Joe Dennis, Keiran Ryder, Jack Muir, Tom Elliott, Adam Penny, Tyler Walledge, Jordan Jackson, Fraser Sheilds