Melbourne claims back to back Dewar Shields
The Defending Premiers, Melbourne, challenged the minor premiers Southern Districts for the Dewar Shield in a hard fought 80 minutes of Club Rugby. Melbourne got off to a solid start leading by 11 points before the Pirates looted a try. Melbourne seemed to dominate for the next series of play, with 50+ metre runs along the wings seemingly the norm.
Source: Melissa Benedict Photography
The Souths defence held up several attempts in their last 5 metres, the last of which gave away a penalty. In the resulting scrum Melbourne charged through Souths and a phase later was over the line by the far corner. The remainder of the half was an exchange of penalties and possession in the middle of the ground with no-one looking like scoring. The Pirates decided to chance their arm and after breaking 6 tackles and offloading 3 times the Pirates scored a handy try to keep them in touch. The unsuccessful conversion meant Melbourne had a handy lead of 18 – 10 whilst the oranges came out.
At Halftime it was discovered that the beer had run out, luckily in the “spirit” of rugby the masses drank anything they could find. Souths looked menacing early in the 2nd half getting the ball over the line, only to be disallowed because of a forward pass. Melbourne immediately responded to the Pirates by scoring a converted try, extending their lead to 25 – 10.
The Souths caught Melbourne napping in the reversal of plays and responded with a converted try next to the posts, reducing Melbourne’s lead to 25-17. The next 10 minutes was all Melbourne attack, a missed penalty from near 1/2 way, and a man held up over the try line resulting in a Melbourne fed scrum. The Melbourne scrum packed in and as they had been doing all day, pushed the Pirates back and scored a try, which was converted to the crowds delight from the sideline.
With less than 10 minutes remaining the Pirates needed to score quickly to stay in touch, which they did several phases and 5 offloads later. The unsuccessful conversion meant they were still 13 points down, achievable, but not likely.
Melbourne ground out the next 5 minutes holding onto possession and slowly pushing forward. Melbourne sealed the Victory with a try, and the referee raised his arm to call the end of the match. The Melbourne kicker put a half-hearted drop kick conversion off to the side before jumping into the huddle of excited Melbourne players who had just won the Dewar Shield.
This sealed Melbourne’s day off, after winning the other 3 divisions they were represented in the Grand Finals, and securing the Cowper Shield as Club Champions of 2010
The deserving Man of the Match was Chris Slade the #13 for Melbourne who scored a great try, and broke the lines many times in the game.
Source: Melissa Benedict Photography
