Tough day out for Porthcawl

ANY visit to regular cup performers Wattstown is always difficult and fraught with danger when you’re defending an unbeaten record, as was the case with Porthcawl on Saturday in the latest round of the WRU Bowl.

Wattstown are a proud Valleys club and their performance was physical and committed.

With Josh White still missing through injury, it was down to Ben Thomas to again assume kicking duties and he duly got the visitors off the mark with a penalty.

With the Porthcawl pack giving as good as they got and defending strongly, Thomas increased the Porthcawl advantage to nil-6.

Just before the break, Wattstown pulled back 3 points with a penalty of their own.

The Seaweeds’ half time pep talk saw them start the second spell strongly and they started to take control.

Yet, as so often happens against the run of play, the home side benefitted from a strange decision by the referee and worked their way over for a converted try to go up to 10-6.

This only galvanised the Seaweeds and sterling work by their pack provided two opportunities that they didn’t waste, with first of all skipper Richard Hnyda crashing over for a try, followed shortly afterwards by flanker Ben Asprea. In an almost impossible swirling wind, Ben Thomas’ two conversions went wide, as did another couple of penalty shots, keeping the score at 10-16.

In reality, the home side never seemed likely to score after that, with Porthcawl’s defence keeping them at bay and the victory assured.

The one piece of not so good news is that Jon Phillips, so far the player of the season, suffered a fracture to his eye socket, which could see him out for a while.

Porthcawl return to League action on Saturday with a trip to Pontycymer, hoping to build on their Bowl win there in the last round and keeping their unbeaten run going.