Excellent Win on the Road

Dagenhams 2nd XV took to the road on Saturday to play Burnham on Crouch 1st team in this merit table clash

The windy conditions didn't spoil what was an entertaining game.

The early phases where evenly matched as the young Burnham backs prodded and probed before some strong work in defence from the D's saw them repelled and the score remained 0-0 for the first 15 minutes before flanker Shadi Smith got his day off to a fine start with a 50m tackle busting run to score and give the visitors a 7-0 lead (James Hogg with the conversion)

The Dagenham pack totally dominated the home side, winning every scrum and disrupting most of their line outs, however some infringements allowed Burnham to kick field position in an effort to pressure the Dagenham lads.

Once again great defensive play from Dagenham saw them turn over ball for Shadi Smith to run in 2 more excellent scores for 19-0 (Hogg 1 Con)

Burnham then lost their best player to a nasty looking ankle injury and from here on in the game was dominated by Dagenham

Further scores, one from number 8 Matt Viera returning from 5 weeks off with a nose injury (no jokes about how big it is please!) and centre Paul Grint should have seen the score at half time as 31-0 to the visitors however the official hadn't recorded them so 19-0 it seems to be ????

Burnham's touch line had now decided they were playing our 1st team (despite the discussions pre-game and the fact the score was 19ish - 0 and not 90-0 at half time) and became quite vocal causing a number of infringements on the field, one particularly late hit in front of the referee which resulted in a serious thumb injury to fly half James Hogg and also one ridiculously dangerous moment when 4 Burnham players lifted, then marched off the pitch before throwing him over the barrier around the pitch, of giant second row David Kitenge

luckily this was all being filmed for posterity at this stage

The second half saw further scores from Shadi Smith (our score 36-0) Jermaine Darkwa (our score 43-0) and Jack Warner (our score 48-0) before the final score, and a well deserved one, for the hosts which left the final score at 48-7 sorry 34-7?????

DoR Brian Wren had this to say after the game;

'Its really nice to get along to see our 2s play this weekend and there were some very good performances. Jack Matthews at 9 played well, Paul Grint at 12 had a solid game and Shadi Smith was outstanding too.

It was also good to see Matt Viera return from a long lay off with injury.

This shows we have a decent level of depth within the squad as a whole and there are second team lads pushing for spots in the first team squad

It was a good game and a great victory.

Team: Drake, Evans (Warner), Bramley (Warner), Kitenge, Garwood, Wren, Smith (Emilio), Veira, Matthews, Hogg (Ballard), Darkwa, Grint, Hogwood, Lagos, Calverley