Gloucester One League
Dursley 38 Bredon Star 17 

DURSLEY took their seventh Gloucester One League victory of the season with victory over Bredon Star at Stinchcombe on Saturday.

This was the return home match with Bredon Star from earlier in the season. Bredon are a similarly mid-table position as Dursley and the middle of the league this year has been extremely close with ten or so points covering fourth to seventh positions.

So everything is still to play for this season, which is why Saturday’s game was important to both teams.

The weather was good for once with a drying pitch and bright sunshine with little breeze to contend with.

Bredon kicked off and from the outset they showed they had a strategy.

Dursley fumbled the collection and Bredon’s winger scored seconds later under the posts.

Dursley took the restart an applied pressure straight way and won a line-out. A good throw-in from Dursley on the edge of the Bredon 22 saw the Dursley backs take control and feed Ben Cole who went through to score on the right touch line. Fly-half Grant Boucher converted to level the scores.

Bredon restarted but Dursley collected well this time and looked to take control through solid forwards play and swift backs movement.

Duncan Goodison got on the end of a Boucher kick, he drew the defence to offload to Jack Western, who walked the ball over the line with ease, with Boucher converting.

Dursley added another when Jamie Lorde collected the ball on a charge and stomped over the Bredon try line wide left .

This one was too acute an angle for Boucher but made the score 19-7.

Bredon answered right back on this reset and pressured Dursley from the restart deep in the Dursley 22, with good hands from the Bredon backs and moving the ball out wide quickly to their winger, he collected the ball and crashed over directly under the Dursley posts. The conversion was easy.

The second half saw Bredon come out the blocks hard and fast and pressured in the Dursley half forcing errors, a penalty awarded just outside the 22 infront the posts saw Bredon take the three points an close the gap to two.

Dursley, stung by this error, then got their act together, collected and pressured well on the restart.

After several phases of ball, good solid rucking from the forwards and good backs support saw the ball collected by Ty Chapel who went over in the far right corner, Boucher converted.

Dursley now dug in and showed their mettle against a Bredon side that was throwing attack after attack at them.

Dursley did some counter attacking and, from one of these, Jamie Lorde popped the ball up from a pick and go and stomped over for another try.

That made it 31-17 and, while Brendon threw the kitchen sink in attack.

But Dursley had the last say. Inside centre Ben Cole scored under the Bredon posts, which Boucher converted.