Newport Gwent Dragons 11-9 Edinburgh at Rodney Parade, Friday 26 September 2008.
The Men of Gwent followed up last week’s fantastic win at Ravenhill with a hard fought victory against a strong and well-fancied Edinburgh side tonight.
Weather conditions were conducive to a free flowing handling game. Both sides showed evidence of this throughout the 80 minutes, though the score-line perhaps wouldn’t suggest that this was the case. The reason for this was that both defences tonight were outstanding, the Dragons’ particularly so in the final third of the game.
The Dragons started bright this evening, taking the game to Edinburgh up front from the start. Numbers 1 to 8 thoroughly impressed me. Captain Tom Willis was inspirational again, Joe Bearman and Grant Webb had outstanding games in defence and attack and locks Adam Jones and Luke Charteris dominated the lineout.
Edinburgh took the lead tonight through the boot of the ever-consistent Chris Paterson. Paul Turner’s men equalled the score with a penalty kick of their own soon after though, Shaun Connor starting in place of the injured James Arlidge converting.
Following another successful penalty kick from Connor, the Dragons scored the only try of the game through the in form Richard Fussell. Good forward play gave the Dragons backs the platform to put the nippy winger over in the corner, the move orchestrated by Gareth Wyatt and the impressive Phil Dollman. Paterson took another three points for the Scots via a penalty kick soon after to set the score at 11-6 going into the break.
The second half was a tense affair for both teams. Paterson converted another penalty on 49 minutes to make it 11-9 and this was the way it stayed. The Dragons had chances to finish Edinburgh off, creating good try scoring opportunities, which they couldn’t quite take. Conversely, Edinburgh could have stolen the game on two occasions through drop goal efforts, each attempt drifting wide of the uprights from the boots of Phil Godman and replacement David Blair.
After a ten minute period of neat but never clinical Edinburgh attacking play in the last third of the game, the Dragons defended with confidence and assurance and defended their slender lead valiantly. The Rodney Parade crowd, fantastic throughout the evening showed their appreciation at the final whistle as the Men of Gwent, playing with a newfound optimism, recorded their second win on the bounce.
Following the game, Head Coach Paul Turner was delighted by the result. “Despite lots of errors from both teams I felt the team grew up and our locks were particularly outstanding tonight” said Turner. “All in all I think we probably deserved to shade it today. It was a game that a year or even three weeks ago we certainly would have lost. We’ll take the win today and results like last week and tonight will certainly help us going into the game against Newcastle”. Captain Tom Willis praised his men for containing an Edinburgh side that tried to spread the play as often as they could, more so than any other team that the Dragons had faced so far this season.
Opposition coach Andy Robinson praised the Dragons for seeing off his side, commenting that any early season criticism of the region was unfounded as the Dragons proved tonight that they were a good side and that Rodney Parade was a difficult place to come and win games.
Match report by Mark Denham
