News

30 October 2017 / Club News

Wattstown RFC 10 PORTHCAWL 16

Any visit to regular cup performers Wattstown is always difficult and fraught with danger when you’re defending an unbeaten record, as was the case with Porthcawl on Saturday in the latest round of the WRU Bowl.

Wattstown are a proud Valleys club and their performance was certainly physical and committed, making the Seaweeds work hard to maintain their unbeaten start in all matches.

With Josh White still missing through injury, it was down to Ben Thomas to again assume kicking duties and he duly got the visitors off the mark with a penalty as the home defence transgressed, for nil-3.

With the Porthcawl pack giving as good as they got and defending strongly, Thomas increased the Porthcawl advantage to nil-6 as indiscipline off the ball by the home side yielded the chance for more points.

A tremendous break by Jon Phillips almost conjured a piece of magic for Porthcawl but his pass just failed to get to centre Gareth Rees who would have steamed in for the try.

Just before the break, Wattstown pulled back 3 points with a penalty of their own, with the match finely balanced for the start of the second half.

The Seaweeds half time pep talk saw them start the second spell strongly and bit by bit they started to take control as the pack made Wattstown toil for some kind of parity.

Yet, as so often happens against the run of play, the home side benefitted from a strange decision by the referee and worked their way over for a converted try to go up to 10-6.

This only galvanised the Seaweeds effort and sterling work by their pack provided two opportunities that they didn’t waste, with first of all skipper Richard Hnyda crashing over for a try, followed shortly afterwards by flanker Ben Asprea. In an almost impossible swirling wind, Ben Thomas’ two conversions went wide, as did another couple of penalty shots, keeping the score at 10-16.

I reality, the home side never seemed likely to score after that, with Porthcawl’s defence keeping them at bay and the victory assured. The one piece of not so good news is that Jon Phillips, so far the player of the season, suffered a fracture to his eye socket, which could see him out for a while.

Porthcawl return to League action on Saturday with a trip to Pontycymmer, hoping to build on their Bowl win there in the last round and keeping their unbeaten run going.  

 

 

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