Rugby: Bowditch’s treble is just not enough as Weymouth & Portland let lead slip

NORTH DORSET II 40

IF a game could ever be described as one of two halves this was the one in Dorset & Wilts One South.

Added to that, how many times has a player scored a hat-trick of tries ended up on the losing side? Very few, but that is what happened to the Seasiders’ flanker Dan Bowditch.

Leading by 31-5 at the break, courtesy of tries from Bowditch (2), JT Moncher, Norton Rogers and Joe Gibson, plus three conversions by Bryn Llewellyn, Weymouth & Portland appeared to be cruising to victory, but the writing was on the wall.

Late in the half the visitors began to show signs that they were far from beaten and so it came to pass.

After the break, they stopped making the mistakes that the Seasiders had punished in the first period and ran in four tries in quick succession.

They were then were awarded a penalty try when a home forward was penalised for a high tackle as a North Dorset forward was about to cross the try line.

This resulted in a yellow card for the perpetrator and Weymouth & Portland were down to 14 men for 10 minutes.

Despite being a man down, the Seasiders managed not to concede again and, when they were back up to full strength, drove forward with Bowditch touching down to complete his hat-trick and Llewellyn converting.

But with that, the scoring was complete and the home side were left pondering how they managed to suffer defeat by just two

points.

Team manager Vaughan Carter said: “I detected that something wasn’t right before the game, there was a strange atmosphere about the club.

“I know that we had to make changes after losing so many players to injury following last week’s Vase final, but this was something different.

“Whether it’s because we are playing Dorchester next and some of the lads were focusing on that game, I don’t know.

“In fact, I was surprised that we were leading by such a big margin at half-time, but they had former Dorchester and Dorset & Wilts hooker Richard Miller in their side and his influence in the second half won them the game, despite the number of miles he has on the clock.”