Mavs v Helsby Match Review

Tide is turning.
Tim was not available, so I was asked to resurrect my old duties as manager. The first job: “pick up after the wayward dogs at the side of the pitch will you Ed.”
As for the game, Helsby had a full complement of 15, some regulars and a few borrowed runcorn rugby league players which potentially could have caused us some problems. The Mavs had its central core of regular players shored up by some strong additions including Matt, Ricky, Dom, Yemeris, George and Alan.
The game was pretty even from kick off, until 15 minutes in when a crunching tackle from George took out a bigger boy leaving Helsby with 14 men. 10 minutes later Dan Jenner crossed the line to make it 0-5, then 2 minutes later new addition Ricky Evans broke away to make it 0-10. Helsby were now starting to tire and 5 minutes later Chris Ford crossed over in the corner with a late tackle and a knee to the head for his troubles. Some powerful running from Neil a few minutes later made it 0-20, with a few minutes to go before half time.
Dion’s snake-like skills made it 0-27 a few moments later. Some great high ball takes from Dion during the 80 minutes, not to mention a thumping try saving tackle in the second half. We were lucky to have him for this game. It's almost over for half the time, but new boy George, playing as a very mobile prop, sprinted in to make it 0-34 at half time. That means a converted try so welcome to Matt who managed 6 points in total without the ref saying “you've only got 15 seconds left for this kick”.
With a man down Helsby’s scrum started to weaken and in the second half went uncontested. Two more tries from Ricky, both converted, sealed the deal. In terms of sportsmanship, Nev, whose throw-in and hooking skills are on the up, swapped over to Helsby until an injury saw him switch for our own Gordon. Surprise of the day for me was when Neil faked an injury to bring on Dom. A pick and go on the blind side and an excellent dummy showed the rest of the team that he’s one to watch. I don’t want to focus on the scrums as they ended uncontested, but the lineouts all seemed to be perfect set pieces.
Andy Smith and Gordon were strong in defence and penetrative in attack, but some special mentions go to Chris Elwell for his aggressive play, post black eye. Ricky for his hattrick and MOTM for today easily given to George, 1 try, 2 assists and a great athletic performance.
The game was a pleasure to watch and was 0-46 as the final whistle went, a strong platform to build on, I just wish I had more time to capture everyone’s performance, but a great day for the team.