Cards mar Cougars’ win as they maintain 100% record

WEST WALES RAIDERS ...................... 12 VALLEY COUGARS ..... 24

A HIGH amount of cards spoiled the Welsh Premier League match between West Wales Raiders and Valley Cougars as the Cougars kept their 100% record, writes Peter Tiffin.

The game started with a bang as most expected from both these teams as the Cougars defence flew up from the kick-off to force a mistake from the first carry of the game.

With the Cougars having a scrum only metres out from the line after a few seconds, they found themselves with a mismatch on the left-hand side where pivot Lee Goddard went over to score the first try of the game which went unconverted.

This shocked the home side as they then had a lot of possession and slowly made their way back in to the game. Over the next 10 minutes both sides had their fair share of opportunities to go over the line but it was the Cougars who struck again as full back Danyl Davies went over on the left edge again, Mike Hurley added the conversion.

With 20 minutes gone and the score 10-0 to the away side, the Raiders started again and managed to get a lot of possession due to back-toback penalties and found themselves in a key area to score. But another incident saw the referee give a yellow card to either side.

This stop meant the Raiders had to start again, but after a good set and a well-worked final play, debutant full back Kalum Evans went over in the corner and pivot Aaron Lewis added the conversion.

The 10 remaining minutes of the half saw it all, firstly a red card to Raiders’ prop Rhys Cherry for an unusual back chatting offence. This took the Raiders’ numbers to 11 but they still managed to claw back the score as loose forward Iwan Rhys Mayze went over from a short play, Lewis adding the conversion again.

With the scores now 1412 to the Cougars following a Liam Watton try, and minutes left of the first half, the Raiders switched off and with already a man deficit a huge gap saw Cougars hooker Dean Higgs dive over to make the scores Raiders 12-18 Cougars at half-time.

The second half began with a well-worked kick-off from Aaron Lewis which bounced straight up in to under-17s winger James Smith was caught metres out. The second half seemed to go on like this as Raiders got held up on numerous occasions by the well-worked Cougars defence.

There was only the one second-half try and it was early on as Cougars’ hooker Dean Higgs sniped over again, Hurley added the two.

The remainder of the second half saw incidents that made it a stop-start game, the first being another Raiders red card for a retaliation with both yellow and red cards for Cougars for fighting. With both teams unable to play their usual styles with so many incidents the game ended quite stale and the final score Raiders 12-24 Cougars.

Raiders head coach Jon Ellis said: “It was a pretty poor game today. At one point I thought we were playing poker as there were that many cards being dealt out.

“On a serious note I would like to commend our players on a brave performance playing majority of the game with 11 players.”

The Raiders would like to thank MYG Oldies for their match sponsorship and their choice of man of the match goes to debutant Raiders full back Kalum Evans.