DROVERS SEAL DERBY SUCCESS
LLANELLI ........................... 21 LLANDOVERY .................... 54
LLANDOVERY’S impressive start to the season continued as they thrashed Llanelli at Parc y Scarlets in the Indigo Premiership.
The Drovers pack held the ascendancy throughout, especially at the scrum, with fly-half Jack Maynard kicking them into an early 9-0 lead.
Wales cap Adam Warren then powered over for their opening try.
Matters then went from bad to worse for Llanelli when wing Ben Raivalitia was sent to the sin-bin for illegally killing the ball at the breakdown.
Llandovery took a 23-6 lead into the interval with Craig Thomas scoring their second try, while Josh Phillips kicked six points for Llanelli.
The visitors began the second half in the same manner they had finished the first with some lovely handling along the short side releasing Aaron Warren, who finished expertly at the corner.
To their credit, Llanelli refused to throw in the towel and were awarded a penalty try as their maul crept towards the line.
But Llandovery were always a step ahead and they secured the bonus point with a sensational pass-kick from Maynard collected by Warren, who touched down.
The visitors flexed their muscles further, with their forward power yielding a penalty try which also led to Llanelli’s Chris Long being yellowcarded.
Jack Davies claimed a consolation try for the hosts, but Thomas crashed over for his second try for Llandovery before they rubbed further salt into Llanelli’s wounds with another penalty try.
“We really targeted this game, and it was nice to come to Llanelli and get a big win,” said Maynard.
“But we want to start looking up the table and targeting big teams like Cardiff.
“We were unlucky when we played them two weeks ago, but we’ve got some very good players in our squad and we are backing ourselves this season.
“Over the last few seasons we have been up near the top but have always come up just short.
“We’ve got the squad, but we just need to make the right decisions in the right areas.
“We’ve targeted the first 10 minutes of every second half because that was letting us down last season, so we can back up what we’ve done in the first half.
“We are always looking for the complete performance.”