SWALEC ONE EAST Oct 2 2010
TREORCHY 19 LLANHARAN 23 HT:10-16
We got our season on the roll with this hard-earned victory at Treorchy, a win that gave Dennis John’s men a great confidence boost.
It hadn’t been the greatest of starts for the boys with four straight defeats, but they would reflect ruefully on a summer of great change in personnel, not helped by subsequent injury problems, and then a fixtures list that that pitted them against teams that turned out to be in the top four in the early stages of Swalec One East
Resources were boosted by the return of second row Nick Eaves, making a return to his former club, as was prop James Greenfield who took his place on the bench to successfully test his injured calf in a second half appearance.
In the backs Llanharan were able to compensate for the injury losses of Rhys Lakin and Nathan Rees the previous weekend by bringing in premiership dual registrations Lee Thorne (Cross Keys) and Elliott Frewen (Tonmawr) so that there were four former youth players behind the scrum, Lloyd Thomas and Chris Williams the others.
Nevertheless, it was a far from easy afternoon at the Oval, but application and bright play took us into a 23-13 lead after holding a 16-10 advantage at the turn around.
However, instead of settling the game down to see out the final quarter, we got drawn into a frantic scrappy affair with Treorchy, who had lost skipper Jamie Summers to a first half broken arm, edging back within striking distance through Celyn Ashton’s two penalties
LLANHARAN 15 Geraint Walsh 14 Elliott Frewen 13 Lloyd Thomas 12 Lee Thorne (Adrian Thomas)11 Paul Adams 10 Shaun Cochran 9 Chris Williams 1 Kieran Moore (James Greenfield) 2 Nathan Huish (Capt.) 3 Luke Powell (Nick Kibble )4 Nick Eaves (Dave Smith) 5 James Connors 6 Justin Benfield 7 Mathew Strong 8 Bill Carey
Unused Replacement: Rhys Griffiths
Treorchy try – Peter Hutchings. Con and pens (4) – Celyn Ashton
Llanharan tries – Geraint Walsh, James Greenfield. Cons (2) and pens (£) – Chris Williams.
Report by Hugh Smith. Images by Richie Jenkins.