Determined team display not enough to prevent defeat (From Penarth Times)

Determined team display not enough to prevent defeat

Caerphilly 27 Penarth 10

ON a very cold day at Virginia Park, Penarth Under 15s travelled away to play against Caerphilly on their first ever visit. Following on from the previous week's fine performance the entire team was looking forward to a keenly contested match.

Caerphilly kicked off and immediately it was clear to all spectators that the home side intended to rely upon their much bigger and heavier set forwards to dominate the game. Fortunately the Penarth forwards, although giving a lot away in height and weight, were more than equal to the Caerphilly forwards and a number of attacks were broken down by fine defending, with Penarth relying upon the strong defence of Philip Lewis, Stuart Clarke and Matthew Sutton in particular.

As a result of the Caerphilly dominance the Penarth backs had little chance to show their attacking skills. However, when a ball did come out to the three quarters, good handling allowed wings Maurice Dunn and Glen Harper to show their pace and stretched the Caerphilly defence.

After 15 minutes the more streetwise Caerphilly forwards were eventually able to power their way over for a converted try, quickly followed by a breakaway try with Penarth pressing on the Caerphilly try line only to see the ball intercepted and the Caerphilly wing running the length of the field to score.

This did not seem to affect the Penarth players who continued to compete for everything and were well led by outside half Chris Poole and his centres Tim Lloyd and Gareth Moorcraft.

Penarth came back more strongly in the second half with a fine individual try from Gareth Thomas who intercepted the ball in his own half and then ran clear of the Caerphilly defence to score underneath the posts and then proceeded to convert his own try.

The Penarth forwards then maintained their aggressive play, and despite many dubious decisions from the Caerphilly coach who was refereeing the match, they still managed to maintain a high quality performance. This eventually resulted in a well-worked lineout move producing a try for prop Alex Cox to put more pressure on the Caerphilly side. Unfortunately, even though the Penarth boys looked like scoring again and reducing the deficit, they were not allowed by the local referee when he blew the final whistle with the Penarth side close to the Caerphilly line and looking almost certain to score.

Another fine performance from the whole team, but in particular the two wing forwards Alex Becu, "Spanish" to his friends, who was voted man of the match, and wing turned forward, Daniel Blatchford who, despite injuring himself, played on throughout the full game.

Yet again the team performance was an improvement on earlier matches and goes to show that with regular training and this level of commitment, the Penarth players have every opportunity of becoming a very strong team when fixtures are resumed in the new year.