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Following last week’s debacle at Mosborough the Dragons returned to winning ways on Saturday producing a solid display against a youthful and enthusiastic Scunthorpe XV. With the responsibility of last weeks horror show resting solely with the Captain’s decision to arrive early and warm up, the veterans resorted to familiar tactics of taking it easy before the kick-off chatting amongst themselves and reminiscing the old days. A topic of discussion between the longer serving Club players was triggered by the extraordinarily bad music being blasted through the PA system in the build-up to the Knights game. To a man the Dragons concurred the decision to offer such “entertainment” to the crowd is at best ill conceived and must surely be distracting for the players. Drew Noble who explained that back in 1997, when he had the honour of captaining the 1st XV, the Club were trying out the introduction of teams over the loud speakers for the first time wholly endorsed this theory. True to the ad hoc and make do nature of the way things were back then, the equipment had seen better days having been retrieved from the back of Norman Micklethwaites garage. It took John Lloyd & Badger Hayze several hours to get the gear working, achieved with only minutes to spare before kick-off. In an attempt to wind up the crowd the DJ announced excitedly “Ladies and Gentlemen, please make as much noise as you can for....... DONCASTER!” There was a slight pause before the music kicked in. Alas, the unconventional wiring of the apparatus meant that when the PA operator pressed PLAY of tape deck A, is was deck B that started spinning. Consequently instead of leading his pumped up, snarling team out to the thumping menace of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’, the players trotted on to the field, somewhat embarrassed and to the amusement of the 67 spectators congregated in the West Stand to the sound of The Bay City Rollers singing “Bye, Bye Baby, Baby Goodbye”.

With so many players returning from injury [watching the Six Nations Championship] the week before, keeping a balanced selection from the 23 available was never going to be easy. Whippet Phillips replaced Miles on the wing, the latter having had further treatment to remove the Teflon coating from his hands. Captain Thomas returned from injury to bulk-up the mid-field and Atkinson somehow regained the hookers berth following a month pestering the rich and famous around The Alps.

Playing downhill, with the wind and the sun on their backs the Dragons started confidently and quickly gained territorial advantage. Despite their early dominance the Dragons were unable to break the exuberance of the visitors defence. 10 minutes into the game the pack leaders’ decision to opt for a kick at goal (while the Captain was distracted chasing a Pikey trying to nick another rugby ball) proved tactically decisive. Conway knocked over the penalty confidently; the first of a personal haul of all 23 Dragons points for the outside centre. With tries, conversions and penalties either side of half time the Dragons’ [Conway’s] consistent scoring caused the visitors problems right the way through the match.

Scunthorpe did their best to contain the Dragons’ superior physical advantage by trying to move the ball away from the pack and attempted to make inroads through the mid-field. Unfortunately for Scunthorpe, Malton marshalled the backs expertly from fly-half, forcing the play back to the exceptional Prydderch at open-side or into the Captains channel at inside centre – both tackled faultlessly all game. 

Persistent infringements featured heavily in Scunthorpe’s tactics and the Dragons were justifiably frustrated by the referee’s reluctance to do anything positive about it. Three consecutive penalties on their own line for collapsing rolling mauls warranted at penalty try and probably a yellow card, but the man with the whistle’s liberal interpretation of the laws prevailed. Predictably both teams took this as licence to cheat as much as possible throughout the rest of the game. With the exception of second-row Christie, who started with little...and still has most of it left, the Doncaster veterans were much better at this than their relatively inexperienced opponents and won the match with something to spare 23 - 8.

Next week the Dragons trek up to Dore Moor to face Sheffield Tigers for the return of a fixture narrowly won by the Dragons at Castle Park back in November.

Dillon

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