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Today's opposition travelled the short journey to South Road from Aberavon, home of the Wizards. The Green Stars being dealt a very bad spell regarding numbers on the eve of Halloween arrived with only eight players. Normally we wouldn't have played this fixture with such low numbers but as we were already to go it would have been a shame not too. As the game is 12 aside,  we had our reservations as to whether anything could be gained from such an encounter as scrums and lineouts would need to be modified, and backlines severely reduced from 7 to 5 and the forwards reduced from 5 to 3.

We started brightly with a couple of easy tries before Green Stars had worked out their positions and impose themselves upon the game. Green Stars clearly drilled to go wide early were impressive to watch going through their paces, but they did seem to lack cohesion which would have put them into commanding field positions time after time to attack with numbers. However our sturdy defence and the odd forced final pass played into our hands to regroup and counter. The wizardry of Sam Taylor King and the aggressive running of  Max the Magician Williams scoring very impressive tries were the major difference in the first half, spellbinding. 30 - 20 at the break but still a very long way to go.
The second half soon got underway and saw Green Stars running in two tries without us realising the game had restarted. The game levelled at 6s. The team then realised they all needed to step up and take responsibility and gradually we started to reimpose ourselves back on our opponents. Once we went back in front, I think it's fair to say the win wasn't in doubt even though we still had a lot to do. If the first half belonged to Sam and Max the second was owned by the Mercurial running of Osian Perkins and Jac Bevan.  It's becoming apparent that the teams we play don't like the way we defend, it is at times hard, it's fair and usually comes in wave after wave. We don't give up and with runners like ours being turned over could be your worst nightmare. Our forwards took to smashing pumpkins in the second half and dominated many of the clashes of titans coming out victors more often than not. 11 - 8 tries or 55 -40 as a final result. A really entertaining game that naturally ebbed and flowed and was very worthy of playing.

Whilst the write up points out the efforts of some, it was entirely about the 14. The half backs played a major role in today's game, the link ups between Will Thomas-Parker and Callum Wallis out to the back line is becoming dependable, the forwards supporting and protecting these two half backs is also getting much much better. The rucking when we want to do it is very good, but we must all aspire to get to the same level as Evan Carless and understand he is a force of one who just can't be everywhere. Tries for the big boys up front Dylan Bell, Matthew Davidson and Rhys Hibbert show an enormous desire to get over the line. Will Thomas-Parker the other try scorer gives us a stat that 50% of our team scored today, when you then look at where they play it shows we are scoring from absolutely anywhere and that is most pleasing to your coaches. For the 50% that didn't score today take it from me that you made the difference today, only one player can score a try at time and that is always off the back of the entire teams efforts. Set yourself a team target of every player in our squad scoring this season and work hard to achieve it. Very proud of the effort and general performance, but don't get drawn into any bickering with either the opposition or officials I guarantee if you do you will get nothing from it, we are all better than that!

Captains Comments,
Not easy going back to 8 aside as we have been coached territorially to go back to solely flat lines needed a lot of concentration. Tough to call an outstanding player of the day but I think Osian Perkins raised his game today to show Sam and Max that we have more than two in our back line.

Try scorers
Sam Taylor-King.      3
Max Williams.            2
Osian Perkins.            2
Jac Bevan.                  1
Dylan Bell.                  1
Matthew Davidson.    1
Will Thomas-Parker.  1