Diss U13s labour in the Southwold sunshine.

After a sparkling performance the previous week at Colchester, this weekend’s exploits of the Diss U13 squad against a strong Southwold side were a bit flat.

Diss couldn’t get much fluency into their play against their seaside hosts and sloppy handling and poor positional sense didn’t help their cause, gifting Southwold an unconverted try early in the match.

Despite being given lots of room to run, Southwold didn’t add to their score in the first half, mainly due to a mighty tackling effort from many of the Diss boys. And the score was levelled just before half-time when Harry Williamson went on a typical rampaging charge down the wing, leaving several defenders scattered in his wake.

The second period saw lots of endeavour again undone by silly mistakes, although Williamson did touch down in the corner for his 2nd try. Aaron Frith narrowly missed the conversion, with the ball again getting caught on the sea breeze as it approached the posts.

Southwold’s efforts were then rewarded (and somewhat gifted by more careless play by Diss) with a try to bring the scores level. Recent encounters between these 2 teams have resulted in several draws or a 1-score win by either team - and a draw looked the likely outcome on this occasion too.

However, the closing stages saw Diss take more control of the game, and although they couldn’t get to their fluent best, man-of-the-match Williamson was able to crash over under the posts for his hat-trick, with Frith successful with the resulting kick to leave the final score Southwold 10 - Diss 17.

A good win for Diss, but one that they made hard work of.