SATURDAY saw Penarth RFC Youth finish their Blues Youth Premier League fixtures with a great 19-5 away win over Cardiff team Rumney to finish a creditable fifth place.

The re-construction of the Blues Youth Premier league this year has meant that the league has been shortened from September to January, with the top teams in the Blues area playing 10 games either home or away against one another, before moving onto a new league cup competition for the second half of the season.

The win has meant that the Penarth boys have finished in the top Tier of the Premiership and will now play in Tier 1 of the league cup competition, a fantastic achievement in their first season in the Youth Premier league.

Following a slow start to the season and adjustments to the high level of completion from the young Penarth squad, the team has grown in confidence and finished off the second half of the league winning four out of five games to claim their spot for cup competition.

Last Saturday managed to seal the extra points when they travelled the short distance to Rumney.

From the start, the Penarth boys were determined to take the game to the opposition gaining the upper hand in both the line out and scrum set piece play and were only thwarted from scoring by an impressive defensive line by the hosts.

The pressure in the contact area from the opposition meant that the Penarth team were making several unforced handling errors which allowed the Rumney youth team to counter attack from their own half into the Penarth 22m.

Despite the overwhelming territorial advantage in the first half, it was Rumney that took the lead after 20 minutes of the game when a loose kick from Penarth was picked up by the Rumney full back who counter attacked into the Penarth half and with good interplay saw the Rumney pack eventually drive over for a try.

That lead remained until the half-time whistle despite some great attacks by the Penarth boys.

A half-time team talk from the Penarth coaches seemed to do the trick when the boys came out firing in the second half and immediately scored a try through prop Geraint Williams who drove over from five metres to level the scores. With a conversion from outside-half Drew Musa Penarth took the lead and never looked back.

Hitting what can only be described as ‘purple patch’ in the game, the team took heed of the coaches advice at half time and started to spread the ball wide from set pieces and second phase ball which resulted in swift hands through the Penarth back line of Joe Williams, Drew Musa, Matt Frost and Aron Arthur to put full-back Luc Kean-Adams in for his first try of the match after 14 minutes and with the conversion, again by Musa, took Penarth to a 14-5 lead.

It was all Penarth from this point on, with great runs led by captain Tom Griffiths supported by the front five forwards of Connor Mitchel, Ed Hurst and Alex shore, complemented by the back row of Huw leach, Ryan Allan and Thaine Baker who was on at half-time for Rhys Powell.

The end result was another try for full-back Kean-Adams after some great interplay between the forwards and backs which saw centre Aron Arthur create the space for the ball to be moved wide for wing Morgan Jenkins to feed the ball to Kean-Adams to score in the corner on 31 minutes.