Fixture

We travelled the short journey sat, down the valley to Cwrt Herbert to play Neath Athletic. We went down with a great squad of 23 and it was good to see Neath Athletic healthy as well with 20+ boys, so an afternoon of good rugby looked on the cards. We started off with bang carrying on our good form from the last couple of months, after being camped almost entirely in their half it was only a matter of time before they cracked but fair play to them their defence stood firm this coupled with a few of our boys having white line fever the score remained 0-0. Almost completely against the run of play a mistake from us at the back resulted in a kick and chase from an athletic player where he scored near the posts. It was a bit of a hammer blow as we produced some good stuff during that first 20min but had nothing to show for it. Our heads didn’t drop though and again we found ourselves hammering the athletic line, a penalty was awarded  but with our dominant scrum we decided to go for the push over, this resulted in number 8 Scott Williams diving over for our 1^st points of the day, Bryn Davies converted. In a replica really of the Athletics first try this time it was centre Gareth Davies who latched onto a mistake from them on their 10m line, Gareth showed great foot balling skills to dive over near the posts, Bryn Davies converted. With time nearly up, scrum half Chaye Griffiths put in a good box kick but unfortunately the chase didn’t match it, their winger caught the ball deep in their half and went on an arcing run, the ball came to their speedy centre and he ran some 50m beating a few of our defenders along the way to score an excellent individual try, this went converted. Score half time Neath Athletic 14 – Seven Sisters 14. If we are brutally honest and I am sure Neath Athletic would agree also apart from 1 mistake and a great piece of individual play it was totally dominated by us but we just couldn’t turn the pressure into points. So the half time talk was basically more of the same but tactically have a better chase when a box kick was being made. The second half started with a bang with a simple 8,9 move from the base of the scrum winger Gareth Durham bashed his winger to score in the corner, Bryn Davies missed the difficult conversion. Although the ground under foot was now becoming very difficult our backs started to put “some width” in their play and some great hands nearly put Gareth Durham in again but he was not to wait long following some great interplay between backs and forwards centre Andrew Holloway drew their winger and Gareth was in at the corner again, Bryn Davies again failed with the difficult conversion. Neath Athletic had some decent players in their ranks notably their centre and number 8 and these 2 were to the fore as they tried to get back into the game, a couple of yellow cards from them mind didn’t help their cause in the final stages of the game. They pounded our line time after time but it stayed intact until the final whistle. Final score Seven Seconds 24 – Neath Athletic 14. It was a decent game of rugby and we were happy with the win in the end to continue our winning streak which now goes onto 5 consecutive wins. Our forwards again put in an excellent shift as usual but special mention to our captain Lindsay Jones who pinched countless balls from the front of the line on their ball to deny them this precious possession. Our backs also played well, although there were some spilt passes it was refreshing to see some air given to the ball under terrible conditions under foot. So all in all a good day at the office, a couple of bumps were had by some of the boys but hopefully they weren’t too serious and we can carry on the good work with another strong squad available for Vardre home sat.