Stour youngsters impress
Not many teams have relished playing againt Stourbridge's Development side this season, but when news broke that they were looking for a fixture DK's new coaches Mark Lockley and Neil Shillingford jumped at the opportunity to take them on.
Not many teams have relished playing againt Stourbridge's Development side this season, but when news broke that they were looking for a fixture DK's new coaches Mark Lockley and Neil Shillingford jumped at the opportunity to take them on.
Not only did it give the duo a chance to become further acquainted with their squad ahead of a crucial home league fixture against South Leicester this weekend, it gave the players the opportunity to top up the renewed confidence earned at Longton seven days previous.
The run out - despite defeat - did them no harm.
Stour's talented set of youngsters scraped home 16-14 due to some inspired vision by fly-half Dan Lavery, whose chip to the corner in the dying minutes was collected by winger Ollie Bache.
But until then, a weakened DK side showed their new mentors something they already knew: that there is enough quality in the squad to turn their Midlands One survival hopes into a reality.
In fairness, the home side were marginally the better overall, making fewer errors and defending well as DK threw everything at them.
The visitors were committed from the start and scored a brilliant try in the first minute.
Left winger Liam Reynolds broke and put full-back Cameron Pimlow under the posts.
DK continued to pour forward but Stourbridge got right back into the game with a catch-and-drive from a lineout after 10 minutes when number eight Duncan White powered over.
Then the game really came alive when an almighty 25-man brawl broke out, a melee that epitomised the competitive nature of the game.
Fly-half Lavery was one of two Stour players sin-binned although in their absence, DK failed to capitalise fully on the numerical advantage despite skipper Ian Gowland running in from 55 metres.
Si Fletcher added the conversion to put DK 14-5 ahead.
With Stour back to 15 men, they put the visitors under heavy pressure for the first time in the game. Lavery reduced the arrears to 14-8 with a penalty on 34 minutes and DK did well to repel several strong thrusts from the home side before half-time.
They could have gone in further ahead with what might well have proved a winning score but Si Fletcher's difficult penalty chance in stoppage time drifted agonisingly wide.
After the break, DK suffered a blow when blindside flanker Ian Langford had to come off and in his absence the visitors came under increasing pressure as they began to struggle to cope with the pace.
Lavery brought Stour three points closer with a penalty before his subtlety undid DK's resilience in the dying minutes one last, and telling, time.
