Dorchester’s Tom Gower, stops Weymouth’s Josh Docherty

On yet another lovely day for rugby Weymouth started the better of the two teams and applied the early pressure. Dorchester however appeared to have weathered the storm and opened the scoring with a well struck penalty by John Firkin. Then came to two pivotal moments. Firstly, after Dorchester had destroyed a Weymouth scrummage, the hosts recovered enough to hack the ball through, a Weymouth player was impeded but with two Dorchester defenders covering there was no chance of a score. However, to the surprise of everybody in the ground, the referee awarded a penalty try.

This was compounded minutes later when Dorchester were awarded a penalty in front of the Weymouth posts. Instead of kicking the goal and closing the gap to a single point Dorchester went for the try. A wall of Weymouth defenders awaited and they gleefully turned the ball over and went the length of the pitch to score a second converted try. Despite much endeavour from both sides there was no further score in the first half.

Dorchester started the second half aggressively but almost immediately gifted Weymouth a third try, losing possession in contact and then missing several tackles. The visitors now had a mountain to climb and desperately needed to score next. When two straight forward penalty attempts were missed it looked like it was not going to be Dorchester’s day. The visitors did dominate the last twenty minutes but Weymouth defended stoutly and despite some bullocking runs from props Hodgson and Bamlet managed to restrict Dorchester to two tries from centre Lee Harvey, neither of which was converted. A case of too little too late.

With Bridport winning easily at Puddletown, the title race would appear to be between the three sides currently separated by a single point and will probably go to the last weeks of the season.

Weatherbury Hearn- SEC - JW Scaffolding Man of the Match: Tom Bamlet
           
Team;     Hodgson, Chalker, Cottell (Bamlet 60), Hodges, Broadbent, Hawkins, Carter, Underhill; Gower D; Firkin; Spensley, Biddle, Harvey, Gower T (Caines 70); Read.