SEASIDERS MATCH LEADERS

Penarth 19 Brecon 21 – Saturday 10 January 2015

Runaway league leaders Brecon came away from the Athletic Field last Saturday with four points, but little else to aid their credibility as they survived a mauling from the Seasiders by the skin of their teeth.

Although Penarth can be hugely encouraged by such a dominant performance, it was, sadly, minor errors in both attack and defence that let the Powys club off the hook.

Brecon began the game with wind advantage and they pressured the home defence into opening a gap that outside centre J.Newman went through with right wing J.Morgan on his shoulder and scoring.

That it wasn’t going to be one-way traffic was evident from the restart, as the Seasiders forced a turnover at the first scrum. So, with a subsequent penalty outside the 22, the hosts elected to scrummage and drove straight over the line, the excellent Elliott Smith, for the third game running, was the scorer.

Penarth were also keen to demonstrate their handling skills in the loose and two sweeping attacks were narrowly halted by a forward pass decision. Then Brecon got lucky as Nathan Palmer fielded a smart grubber and followed his instincts in an ambitious attempt to run it back up-field. This really didn’t work out and Rhys Morgan couldn’t latch on to the wild inside pass, so it was centre Newman who touched down for the visitors.

With a stiff breeze still coming in from Lavernock Road, it was increasingly all about field position and the Seasiders worked it back up and secured a penalty 30m out. Brecon gained possession against the throw, but knocked on, leading to a scrum in their own 22. The home pack were totally dominant by now and demolished the Brecon scrum, leading inevitably to another scrum. The dose was immediately repeated and referee Kelvin Shorte was decisive in awarding a penalty try.

The remainder of the half was dominated by Penarth with a combination of three-quarter moves and relentless pick-and-drives, but they nevertheless couldn’t quite overhaul the two-point lead the visitors were clinging on to desperately.

This continued into the beginning of the second half as the Seasiders continued to dominate, but failed to register a score. A turning point of sorts was reached after 65 minutes when Brecon replaced their tight-head with a bulkier model and managed, at least, to stabilise their beaten pack. All too soon a sequence of Penarth errors allowed Brecon replacement Lucas Jones to pick up on the line and score.

With 18 minutes remaining, the Seasiders re-applied themselves to the task in hand, despite having lost both their second rows. Such was the team spirit and self-belief, they kicked to touch when they won a penalty in the Brecon 22 and Scot Mackie claimed the ball in the line-out. Penarth laid siege to the line, but were finally forced to spin it wide where Rhys Morgan beat the stretched defence on the diagonal to score.

With the Brecon lead reduced again to just two points and ten minutes remaining, there seemed to reason to doubt a famous victory was on the cards, but a few more wrong options taken and a missed penalty allowed the visitors to wriggle off the hook and maintain an 8-point lead at the head of the table.

Having run the two top teams painfully close in successive weeks, the Seasiders clearly have everything in place to beat the drop, but they need to exploit this quickly by defeating next week’s visitors to the Athletic Field, Fairwater. The Cardiff side currently occupy the third relegation position and have two games in hand on Penarth, so this really has got ‘must-win’ written all over it.

PENARTH Rhys Morgan, Nathan Palmer, Alex Thau, Tom Luck, James Crothers, Kevin Maddox,
Gareth Mathias. Richard Merrett, James Docherty, Sean O’Sullivan, Mike Clare (Tom Bartlett) , Stuart Clarke (Jerome Bryan), Scott Mackie [C], Elliott Smith, Richard Howells.

Scorers: Scot Mackie T
Elliott Smith T
Penalty try T
James Docherty 2C