Selby’s series of very close matches continued on Saturday away at Dinnington where despite dominating possession they eventually won thanks to a very large slice of luck.

A constant feature of the season so far has been the excellence of Selby’s scrummage and, after establishing position on the Dinnington line early on, the very first scrum served notice of what was to follow for the match as the Swans demolished the largish Dinnington eight, up the hill and against the breeze. Only desperate home defence, and maybe a little leniency from Mr Referee, kept Selby out as a number of driving scrums and mauls collapsed on the Dinnington line. And then to rub salt into Selby’s wounds, from their very first forage into Selby territory, Dinnington capitalised on a lost possession to simply, and rather too easily, blast their big backs up the middle through some flimsy tackling for a try and 7-0 lead after fifteen minutes.

With Selby continuing to reap a surfeit of possession from the scrummage they were soon back on the attack, but despite good breaks from Jay Robinson and Quentin McGrory-Hill they were then guilty of not consolidating those positions as almost immediately the ball was turned over with unforced handling errors – and with Selby’s line-out suffering from an assessed referee’s insistence on absolutely straight throw-ins, frustration started to set in. However, after twenty five minutes more good ball from the scrum gave Selby a three man overlap near the Dinnington line where Coach Robinson, probably wisely, decided against risking another handling error by powering over the last defender himself to score for 7-5.

Dinnington continued to make the most of a simple game plan of bashing the ball up the middle but the introduction of ‘big boy’ Rob Bourke from the sub’s bench put an earth-shuddering halt to it with a Richter Scale 9 collision between him and Dinnington’s very own big boy centre – which our big boy definitely won! Finally a ‘referee approved’ straight line-out gave Selby’s pack the chance to drive forward for Danny Wilkinson to feed Skipper Josh Cruise for a walk-in try in the corner for 7-10 at half time.

Playing with the slope, and wind, and rain, and with scrum dominance, the second half should have been a breeze – but Selby then made rather hard work of it as handing errors abounded. Following a great break from Wilkinson, an easy three point penalty to stretch the lead was eschewed in order to let the backs cock-up again as they overplayed it in the poor conditions, before Dinnington then gave Selby a lesson in ball retention as they played through multiple phases (and benefitting, as usual, from several Selby infringements) to crash over to regain the lead at 14-10.

With Dinnington tails now up, Selby’s frustrations only grew as the handling errors continued - encapsulated by a gold-plated chance to score under the sticks, following a superb Cruise grubber through, being knocked on with no Dinnington player in sight. Finally front-rower Duncan Hardy, who had probably had enough (along with the rest of the pack) of getting up from winning the ball in the tight to watch Selby’s backs immediately lose it, showed them how to do it by intercepting a Dinnington backs move on half-way to rumble in for 14-17 with ten minutes to play.

The remainder of the match was then played out in the Selby half, as with Robinson binned for a tip-tackle; Dinnington took full control to batterer away for the winner. As Selby’s panic and infringement count escalated, a last minute penalty into the corner gave Dinnington the chance to snatch it, and they were convinced they had done as they drove the line-out over for what appeared to most to be a good touchdown – but no, the only man who mattered was unsighted (and had left his x-ray vision at home), so Selby escaped! Perhaps as restitution Selby were then mysteriously penalised at the resultant scrum giving Dinnington a repeat last gasp chance to kick for the corner and again try to drive the line-out over for the win – and it looked certain they were going to do it before, with only inches to go, another almighty clattering from Bourke stopped the maul dead and dislodged the ball for the Selby win.

So, three wins from four for Selby and a nosebleed-inducing fifth place in the Yorkshire One league – and the Swans will hope to build on that at home to sixth-placed Old Crossleyans on Saturday, kick off 3pm.