Disappointing Start to the Season

Dagenham welcomed Billericay to Central Park on Saturday in our opening Essex League DIv 1 fixture knowing that we are in for a tough season

The young Dagenham Squad shows lots of potential but also showed why experience is important too if a side is to be successful

Billericay play a pretty limited but very effective style of rugby and out muscled the Dagenham youngsters at set piece time winning virtually every scrum with relative ease and this on its own meant the D's would struggle on the day

Honesty is important when you're trying to progress and in honesty we didn't perform well, made far too many handling errors in key areas and lacked the power up front to do anything about the massive Billericay pack who scored 4 of their 5 tries.

Early glimpses of potential were wasted with poor handling and some poor decision making also played into the visitors hands.

A conversion rate of 5 from 8 chances against the home sides 1 from 6 tells its own tale and there's no question the more experienced and better organised visitors deserved their win.

The positive note is the lads never gave up, even when down to 13 men through injury, and ended the game with a deserved score

Onwards and Upwards !