Dagenham's first game of the season was an away trip to Maldon RFC which they won 62-5 scoring 10 try's in the process. It was a good run out for the lads showing some creativity in the backs and big hits throughout the team.

From the kick-off, a handling error gave Maldon a scrum deep in our half where Maldon kept the ball for about 5 minutes, forcing Dagenham to show some good defensive qualities to keep them at bay. However a quick turn-over spurred on a counter attack from which Connor profited from, touching down out wide. Maldon again had most of the possession in the first quarter, Dagenham defending well but handling errors letting them down when they tried playing out of their half. As the first quarter came to a close, Charlie B chipped a lovely ball over the top of the Maldon defence for Antonio to gather and score.

At the start of the 2nd quarter, it felt as if Dagenham were really starting to pressure Maldon, physically dominating with some big hits from the likes of Mitchell, Antonio and Brad. This evidently paid off with Antonio scoring his second of the game and Beni touching down for his 1st. The rest of the 2nd quarter was dominated by human error and some resilient defence from Maldon, managing to keep the score at 24-0.

It was clear that if Dagenham could cut out the mistakes and keep the ball they could start really dominating the match and that was expressed during the half time team talk.

As the 3rd quarter kicked off, Dagenham started to turn the screw. Beni got his 2nd and Antonio got his 3rd profiting from a great bit of play from the back line with Daniel passing to Will who dummied through the Maldon defence out wide before popping the ball out of the back of the hand to Jermaine who cut inside drawing the man and passing to Antonio to score under the posts. There were two more tries in this quarter, Charlie Mc crashing over for his first, (and probably last) of the season and Jermaine profiting from a chip out wide from Will.

Dagenham started the better of the two teams again in the last quarter with Jermaine again scoring from a chip from Will. Maldon fought back in the remainder of the quarter managing to grab a try. Maldon turned on the aggression hitting hard but Dagenham responded with even bigger hits of their own before Beni rounded off the game with his 3rd.

1. Charlie McGovern 1T
2. Thomas Caton
3. Calum Cowie
4. Mitchell Broom
5. Callum Broom
6. Daniel Stukins
7. Chris Warner
8. Bradley Duff
9. Will Evans 6C
10. Charlie Baynham
11. Beni Manizan 3T
12. Jermaine Darkwa 2T
13. Antonio Williams 3T
14. Seun Idowu
15. Connor Brown 1T
16. Alex Goodenough

Special mention to the physicality of the boys today and a solid debut for Seun.

Match Report by Will Evans