News

U15s match report 👏🏻👏🏻

Sunday 6th January 2019.

After a long 3 week break the young men of Machen U15s took to the road for their first game of 2019 against local(ish) rivals Nelson. The break could not have come at a better time as many lads were carrying knocks and needed some long overdue R&R from a hard and successful first half of the season. A good hard training session the Thursday before was just what the doctor ordered to blow away the cobwebs. However, as the game got under way it seemed as if the lads had overindulged during Christmas and were off the boil for the first quarter as the home team took an early 5-0 lead. The lads soon woke up and got into their stride. They upped the physicality and intensity and soon run in 4 unanswered tries to lead 20-5. Pick of the bunch was Cameron's solo 30 metre effort to show some good footwork, speed and strength to beat the cover defence of 5 players.

Nelson then hit back with another score and also took a penalty to narrow the gap to a single score. One of the Nelson lads then suffered a serious injury that needed the horrible sight of the stretcher and our thoughts are with him and wish him a speedy recovery. The break in play and a few stern words seemed to give the lads another wake-up call and they started playing some sublime physical rugby to earn the right to go wide and show off a full range of skills. Several scores were to come with Evan getting his first try for Machen and Josh getting his second for his 20th of the season and 100 points. Our records show that Josh has scored over 100 points for the last six seasons – well done buddy. There are a couple of other lads very close to 100 points for the season, which goes to show we possess a number of attacking threats.

There was some good work at the breakdown with excellent counter rucking to win turnover ball. Some good linout work with none lost on our own throw and we stole a couple of theirs. Another strength was our scrum and we won all of our own and disrupted a few of theirs. The backs were not to be outdone and with a solid platform, Rob and Lennon provided quick clean ball and the backs caused havoc with the ball in hand and were accurate when they spread the ball wide.

It was great to see Gethyn back after several months out with a broken hand and crossed the whitewash for a brace of his own, and great to see Dafydd and Lennon who recently transferred to us to win their first cap in the colours of blue and white.

Conditions were perfect today and the large number of supporters were treated to a great game of rugby from both sides that showed impeccable discipline throughout. Machen were by far the superior team and comments from the ref and Nelson's coaching staff were: Ref “Wow, you've got a good team there", Coach “fair play, you gave us a lesson in how to play rugby" . Comments like this are pleasing to hear, especially when we blew hot and cold today.

Good 8/10 performance today to win the derby bragging rights. Well done boys 💙💙💙.

Try scorers were Josh Hart x2, Gethyn Cannon x2, Cameron Jones x2, Evan Littlewood, Logan George: Conversions Bailey Braithwaite x4.

Nelson 20-48 Machen