Gloucester One

Dursley 22 Chipping Sodbury 20

A LARGE crowd of VIPs watched a gripping game of end-to-end rugby between Dursley and Chipping Sodbury played in great spirit by two well drilled sides.

On the day of the grand opening of their refurbished clubhouse, Dursley came from ten points down to secure a narrow victory in front of local dignitaries and GRFU representatives.

Chipping Sodbury started the game the better as directly from the kick-off a fumble in the Dursley ranks allowed Cameron Flye to drive over from close range.

The conversion was made by Tom Farthing to give Sodbury a seven-point margin after only two minutes.

Things went from bad to worse in the opening exchanges for Dursley as they were penalised for numerous infringements.

One of the penalties was slotted from close range by Farthing to give the visitors a 10-point margin, 12 minutes in.

However, captain Scot Udal pulled the team together and, by cutting out the unnecessary penalties, Dursley got onto the front foot.

Sodbury started to give away a few more penalties under the constant pressure and one of these was slotted by Boucher to bring Dursley back to within seven points.

When full back Ollie Halford made a jinking and powerful run back into the Sodbury half last man Ryan Halford made a high tackle and the referee, who had an excellent game throughout, had no option but to award a yellow card.

The home side then levelled the scores when Alex Budd came off the back of a ruck and crashed over the line under the posts with Boucher converting.

Almost immediately afterwards Sodbury had a second player in the sin bin when Flye was given a yellow card for an infringement near their goal line.

From the resulting penalty, Dursley drove the ball well and when it was recycled the extra two-man advantage showed as the backs spun the ball out wide to winger Damien Cummings, who took on the remaining defender and made the pass for the waiting Simon Camm to run in for the second try. This time it went unconverted but Dursley led for the first time at 15-10.

Sodbury had no intention of giving up though and the inevitable happened just before half-time as Dominic Pullen broke through out wide to score, making it 15-15 at the interval.

The superb kicking of replacement fly half Danny Brookes made good ground against the wind and after one such kick Dursley spent some time in the Sodbury half.

There was still a lot to do though and, after a penetrating run on the wing by Bradley Winchle, the ball was recycled to Udal, who broke a tackle and charged 20 metres to score under the posts.

Sodbury weren’t finished and, with Dursley duo Jake Martin and Camm both in the sin bin, Farthing scored a try before hitting the post with his conversion attempt.

However, some excellent defence in the last 15 minutes saw Dursley hold on.