The Daggers first home pre season fixture of 2010 saw a visit from Championship side Norwich City.
The Norwich side was made up of a selection of senior pros and youngsters. As early as the fifth minute the Daggers signalled their intentions as Romain Vincelot hit a shot just over the bar. The canaries went down to ten men for a short while when Owen Tudur Jones went off to have a cut bandaged and in the meantime Gavin Tomlin thought he'd opened the scoring when he put the ball past Ruddy in the Norwich goal. However, the keeper took the edge off the shot and Elliot Ward was able to clear the ball off the line. Vincelot again tested the visitors with a dipping long range effort which hit the top of the net with the goalkeeper beaten,
The opening goal arrived in the 24th minute and was just rewards for the Daggers and their attacking play. A Danny Green cross from the right wasn't cleared by the City defence and Gavin Tomlin made it three goals in three pre season appearances, stabbing the ball home. The visitors almost equalised shortly before the interval but Chris Martin's header from a corner was cleared off the line by Mark Arber.
On the hour the game proved far from friendly as tempers started to boil over following a tackle by Stuart Lewis on Korey Smith that saw the latter retaliate but the referee decided a warning was enough. Paul Lambert decided to withdraw the midfielder though as he made eight changes a minute later.
It was the Daggers who looked more likely to score the games second goal and Romain Vincelot thought he had done just that when he headed a Darren Currie corner against the underside of the crossbar. Instead the game finished 1-0 to the home side and a lot of encouragement was taken from the performance.
D&R: 30. Chris Lewington, 2. Abu Ogogo, 3. Damien McCrory (14. Gareth Gwilliam 60 mins), 4. Scott Doe (12. Will Antwi 60 mins), 5. Romain Vincelot, 6. Mark Arber, 7. Danny Green (16. Darren Currie 60 mins), 8. Stuart Lewis (24. Graeme Montgomery 81 mins), 9. Paul Benson, 10. Gavin Tomlin (35. Josh Scott 71 mins), 11. Peter Gain (17. Billy Bingham 60 mins). Unused subs: 27. Danny Sambridge, 15. Luke Wilkinson, 19. Alex Osborn, 22. Lee Wooton, 25. Femi.
Norwich: 1. John Ruddy (13. Jed Steer 60 mins), 4. Matthew Gill (15. David Fox), 8. Owain Tudur-Jones (5. Michael Nelson 60 mins), 10.Simeon Jackson (21. Josh Dawkin 60 mins), 12. Anthony McNamee (14. Wes Hoolahan 60 mins), 16. Chris Martin (9. Oil Johnson 60 mins), 17. George Francomb, 18. Korey Smith (7. Andrew Crofts 60 mins), 19. Simon Lappin - capt (11. Andrew Surman 60 mins), Remy Gordon (3. Adam Drury 60 mins), Ward (2. Russell Martin 46 mins).
Att: 1,092 (254 Norwich City)
