Bees are stung by Dudley’s Westoe backlash (From Dudley News)

Bees are stung by Dudley’s Westoe backlash

8:00am Friday 2nd November 2012 in Sport

DUDLEY Kingswinford put their wretched defeat at Westoe behind them with a 33-17 beating of National Two North local rivals Birimingham and Solihull.

A team meeting last Tuesday delivered a few home truths in the aftermath of their trip to Newcastle.

Player-coach Jon Higgins said: “The performance at Westoe wasn’t acceptable and the players were told that.

“Ability-wise, we’re good enough to be competitive at National Two level and we should have beaten Westoe.

“But we went into that game with the wrong attitude. We asked all the players for a response against Birmingham and Solihull and we got it. “We were the superior side throughout.

“However, the win over Birmingham and Solihull will be wasted if we don’t go on to beat Hull this Saturday. We’ve kicked on and now we have a level to maintain.”

DK rang the changes in the wake of their defeat to Westoe, some were tactical, but some were enforced though injuries.

The hosts made an uncertain start as they made a fatal error when waiting for the referee’s whistle following a Bee’s knock-on, allowing visiting full-back Oscar Heath to run 30 metres and score by the posts for scrum-half Jack Jolly to convert.

Jolly soon added a penalty to put Bees 10-0 up and it wasn’t until the 25th minute that DK responded when some devastating play from centre Stefan Shillingford, who split the visitor’s defensive cover for skipper Ed Parry to score and full back Gareth Bown converted.

DK then had second row Tom Bissell yellow carded, but survived his absence before taking the lead, Connah Jones nipping in to score with Bown converting.

However, DK then had prop Danny Richards sin-binned on the stroke of half-time after pulling down a maul.

That didn’t stop DK from going onto dominate the second half.

Another break from Shillingford finally resulted with Higgins dummying his way over the line to make the score 19-10.

The outstanding Shillingford then supplied DK with a bonus-point try and with Bown bagging his third conversion, the DK looked home and dry at 26-10.

A fifth try followed on 64 minutes when flanker Joe Carpenter forced his way over and Bown kicked the extras.

But Bees kept going and were rewarded with a consolation try in the 79th minute when replacement back Robert Brown exploited a rare gap in the DK’s cover. Jolly converted to complete the scoring.

On Saturday Higgins’ side host Hull at Heathbrook with kick-off at the earlier time of 2.15pm.