Cooper and Bvuma see All Golds to fine victory
DALE Cooper’s powerful break midway through the second half ended a potential fightback from the Cardiff Blue Dragons and saw the All Golds to a 40-14 win at St Peter’s.
Winger George Bvuma scored two sensational long distance tries in the first half of a man of the match performance in his first appearance for the club.
Looking to get back to winning ways after last week’s defeat at Torfaen, the All Golds started well, completing their first two sets and Paul Bolger almost opened the scoring.
However, after five minutes, Bvuma made his first telling impact. After taking the ball from first receiver inside his own half, he sliced through a gap in the defence, beat the full back and raced away to the posts. Rhys Evans added the extras for the perfect start.
The sides then traded blows until another unforced error from the Blue Dragons, followed by the concession of a penalty gave the All Golds field position from which Jorge Cabral forced his way over for an unconverted score.
The All Golds went straight downfield to collect their third try. Luke Stephens made the initial break and was on hand to collect Jack Uren’s delightful flick pass to score.
At 16-0 down, Cardiff had to score next to stay in touch with a rampant All Golds and after regathering the restart, good work on the last tackle saw Corey Imperato blast his way over. Jack Dryden’s conversion hit a post.
They continued to press but an error gave the All Golds a scrum in their own half and Bvuma took the first carry.
Breaking a tackle, he simply had too much pace for the cover and cantered to the posts. Evans’ goal made it 22-4 with five minutes to go to the interval.
Before the sides swapped ends, the Blue Dragons gave notice they were not out of it quite yet as Duane Iles scored a fine try by the posts.
The second half started in sensational fashion. James Royle picked up a Cardiff error from the kick-off and ran at the defence. Following a repeat set of tackles, Royle flew in at the corner.
However, the All Golds’ play began to get sloppy and Cardiff produced a wellworked try from Kane Harris, converted by Dryden, to bring the score to 26-14.
But Cooper gave the match it’s decisive turn. An innocuous fourth tackle carry suddenly turned into a try-scoring run as he brushed off tackler after tackler in a 45-metre run.
Cooper did it again on the All Golds’ next possession, powering through in identical fashion to set up Evans to go over and with the stand off adding the extras, the game was done and dusted.
All Golds extended their lead through Alasdair Anderson, who touched down in the corner with the last play of an entertaining game.