Villeneuve Leopards’ scrum half Daniel Marjanovic was the star as Serbia beat Netherlands 30-4 at RC Oysters, Oistervijk, to take Euro B to a deciding game. The win was the first time that the Serbians had beaten their opponents in their fifth meeting.

Victory now against Malta next week will seal the title for them, but a Knights’ triumph will require calculators to see which of the three teams claim the trophy on points difference.

“We turned up we really well today and we’ve worked hard on making us focus on ourselves and that’s been key in our performance,” said Serbia head coach Daren Fisher. “I think we need to tidy our discipline, however, losing two players early in the first half meant bigger minutes from our middles as we look to next week. 

“We had quite a few stand outs; Stefan Arsic, Jesse Soric, playing his first game at fullback, and Daniel Marjanovic was outstanding for us, especially given that all week he’s carried fluid on his knee and he only made the squad at the captains run, so to get through the game with that performance was impressive.”

Marjanovic began and ended the scoring, initially burrowing through from dummy-half, Lachlan Ditchman with the goal. Soric added a second try with a fine diagonal run on the left, Rajko Trifunovic with a similar move on the right gaining Serbia’s third touchdown in a terrific point-a-minute start.

Damon Koolstra weaved his way through to get Netherlands off the mark five minutes before half time, but that was their highpoint.

Marjanovic took advantage of field position from Lachlan Van Der Vliet’s dropped ball to add his second try with a dummy at the line, and veteran Jason Muranka got on the end of a move from Serbia’s spine to touch down at the right hand side of the posts.

Marjanovic completed his hat trick, powering through the middle from the base of a scrum, and he had the final word with a long range try to complete the impressive win, Serbia posting seven tries but only kicking one goal.

Netherlands head coach, Dave Hunter, commented: “It was a really disappointing loss. We defended too much, turned over too much ball and their forwards made us work really hard. We had opportunities to attack but we couldn’t keep enough possession. Congratulations to Serbia, they fully they deserved their win.”