SEASIDERS SECOND BEST AS CLOUDS GATHER

Penarth 6 Clwb Rygbi Cymry Caerdydd 47 – Saturday 7 February 2015

The Seasiders find themselves hanging on to 8th place in Division 2 (SE Central), but only by the skin of their teeth as relegation clouds gather. The good news is that the next four games are against teams at the bottom end of the table, but they then face a three-game run-in against teams at the top.

Penarth again made a solid enough start, as a largely even first half was dominated by penalty kicks and the score after 35 minutes was 6-9. Both sides had threatened to cross the line, but only the visitors were going to manage this from now on. They ran in two tries in the last five minutes of the half and outside centre Steffan Morgan was instrumental in both; putting wing Jack Lewis in for the first and scoring the second himself.

Whichever way you look at it, 6-23 is a long, long way from 6-9 and the second half opened with Morgan causing more grief by working the gap to send number 8 Hywel Jones through to the line. Despite trailing by 22 points, there was plenty of life left in the Seasiders, as both James Thatcher and Rhys Morgan came close to scoring.

Then the coaches rang the changes, bringing on three replacements. Penarth briefly threatened before a turnover led to a three-man breakout by Clwb Rybgi and a bonus-point try by replacement Mike Perry. A further two replacements followed as Rhys Goodfellow limped off and Clwb spurned an opportunity for a fifth try with a knock-on at the line.

Then the Seasiders started to lose players to yellow cards, with James Docherty the first to go. Thus weakened, they were unable to withstand a maul, from which outside-half Oliver Jenkins, who had been merrily putting away the penalties and conversions all afternoon, wriggled over for the try.

Penarth were briefly reduced to 13 men before Docherty returned, but this made little real difference to the outcome as the referee missed a forward pass and a knock-on before prop Nick Willetts crashed over for the sixth and final try.

The Seasiders now have a fortnight to get their act together before travelling to meet 7th-placed Pentyrch on 21st February, a match which has must-win written all over it. Fixtures against Gwernyfed, Wattstown and Abercynon follow and if Penarth can maximise their returns from these games, they can surely avoid the drop.

PENARTH Rhys Morgan, Nathan Palmer, James Thatcher (Simon Barry), Tom Luck, Rhys Goodfellow (James Crothers), Kevin Maddox, Gareth Mathias (Tom Hillman), Jerome Bryan, James Docherty, Sean O’Sullivan, Stuart Clarke (Mike Clare), Scott Mackie [C] (Matt Sutton), Alex Thau, Tom Bartlett.

Scorers: James Docherty 2P