By Dean Quinn

Folkestone Academy went into this fixture struggling for players as usual. With the loss of Chris Petley to the dizzy heights of the 1st team and Jordan Godden out with a  head injury, also a fixture of Folkestone Vets today taking away some vital players the team looked depleted. This was alleviated somewhat by the cancellation of the 3rd team fixture due to lack of players. 
On paper this was going to be a tough fixture against Dover 3rds which is thier academy side, a club that has gone up the leagues in the last few years. On looking at the sides Dover had a much bigger pack and this was evident when it came to tight play and the scrums. However Folkestone started off the game in true academy style, in that they played the type of rugby that is great to watch with the ball being thrown around as if it was a sevens game. Folkestone backs were cutting through the Dover defence like a knife through butter and opening up gaps that appeared from nowhere. With the Woolford brothers at scrum half and centre accordingly a faster and more expansive game was played. In the first half it was all Folkestone with Dover having no answer for Folkestone's pace and interlink passing. The Estonian Tanel Akolov on the right wing could not be stopped and was like Forest Gump with a rugby ball, unfortunately for his opposite number he did not learn the first time when he showed Akolov the outside and he grabbed it for his first score. This led to a further three tries for the Estonian pocket rocket. During the first half his Estonian team mate Allan Askileskiri thought he would get in the act scoring a well worked try himself bursting through the Dover defence.  Dover did try to hit back by kicking over the heads of the Folkestone backs only for the ever present Hunt to collect and ship it out to the Estonian Gump on the wing. On speaking with Standing on the other wing he stated he felt forgotten as he rarely saw the ball. With good service from Alex Pritchard at flyhalf Folkestone flourshed in the backs. Drew Woolford was popping up everywhere with a well worked try in the corner. All of the conversions were attempted by young Cox ( yes he is a hooker) of which he converted three of them. At half time Folkestone were 41 -0 up. A team talk ensued that went along the lines of keep up waht you are doing and lets keep the Dover side of the score board at 0.
 Well as you can guess as with all Folkestone rugby another 40 minutes of the same was not going to happen and Dover made sure of that. They came out in the second half and played the game to their strengths with a far heavier and more experienced pack than they began to win their fair share of the ball and then some. The Folkestone front row of Cribbens, Cox and a pulled out of retirerment Guck found themselves under immense pressure along with Dempster and Bass in the second row. It took great work by Bass and young Josh Palmer to try and bring down the Dover attackers and win the ball back for Folkestone. Folkestone soon gave away the 0 score line with Dover using thier weight and after sustained pressure the tries began to mount up for them. Despite sterling work by Gardener, Ballard and again Palmer Dover came back with 4 tries and two conversions all from tight play and pushover scrums. Young Ed Funnel was brought on to replace Cribbens at prop and tried with all his might to hold back the tide but Dover were just too strong. Folkestone did manage to work back into the opposition half for a rare five minutes and James Woolford went over for a well worked try in the corner. Cox was shown a yellow card for an infringement in a tight piece of play leaving Folkestone down to 14 men. With the final whistle blown and the scores at 46- 24 Folkestone were pleased with thier performance and it was left with that cliche saying of it was very much a game of two halves. Two very different sides with totally different strengths, thankfully Folkestone were able to capatalise with their fast expansive game to come out on top.