The Dee travelled west on Saturday for a rearranged League fixture against Strabane. The home team were out for revenge after the Dee had got the better of them in the semi-final of the Gordon West Cup back in January. Coupled to that was their motivation to finish second in the league with victory almost guaranteeing a place in the promotion playoff. The Dee, however, were more concerned about managing their significant injury list and making sure that they had as strong a team as possible fit for next week’s Cup Final. Therefore, the Dee’s lineup showed several personnel and positional changes from last week. Spring had definitely arrived with the sun shining throughout the game making the conditions ideal for running rugby. Unfortunately for the Dee it was Strabane who did most of the running as the first half was one that was best forgotten. Strabane were fired up from the start and quickly began to dominate both possession and territory. The Dee did not help themselves with several missed tackles and handling errors and the pace of the hosts backline caused them problems time and time again. Strabane opened the scoring after only 5 minutes and then scored at regular intervals throughout the half. On the rare occasion Dee managed to get into the Strabane 22 the home defence stood firm and the half came to a close with the score at 41-0. As the second half began another Dee mistake in Strabane’s 22 allowed their centre to run the length of the field to score. The Dee then enjoyed their best spell of the match and threatened the Strabane line on several occasions. Eventually they did manage to score when Daniel Ontswedder forced his way over close to the posts to give Matthew Pentland a relatively easy conversion. Strabane then came back to score two more tries before the referee put the Dee out of their misery by blowing for full time. The only positive that the Dee can take from this game is that it was relatively injury free.

An important week of training lies ahead before the Dee run out at the Kingspan next Saturday, cheered on by a large contingent of Dee supporters, kick off is 2.30pm. C’mon the Dee!!