WRU Championship
Cardiff Met 33 Newcastle Emlyn 20
Newcastle Emlyn went down to a disappointing defeat at the hands of the students but despite the result there was plenty of encouragement for coach Marc Lloyd as he looks towards this weekends fixture against Trebanos.
The return of centre Steffan Evans following time out travelling is a big boost as is the outstanding form of some of the forwards in particular second row Dan Havard and skipper and hooker Alex Williams who were both immense.
Unfortunately, Emlyn could not have got off to a worse start when the visitors were penalised at a ruck and Met centre Tom Morgan kicked a relatively simple penalty to open the scoring. Emlyn’s woes continued when the hosts extended their lead soon after when from an Emlyn mistake powerful second row Dombrandt thundered over for a try converted by Morgan to extend their lead.
The red and whites though rallied and hit back when an accurate throw from hooker Williams was taken two handed by Havard and Emlyn executed a perfect driving maul resulting in Williams being accredited with the score, converted by Dan Davies.
The Met responded when hooker Shawn Howard crossed for a try converted by Morgan and the fly half extended Met’s lead a few minutes later with another penalty when Emlyn were penalised for collapsed a driving maul.
Then came possibly Emlyn’s best period of play when they won the restart and the ball ended up in the hands of winger Llyr Davies. The winger embarked on a weaving run taking him past a number of would be tacklers but he was brought down just short.
With half time approaching the Met launched another series of attacks but surprisingly dropped the ball just inside Emlyn’s twenty two. Centre Llyr Jones latched on to the loose ball and hacked it downfield and he was pulled back as he went to kick it. The visitors kicked the resultant penalty into touch and Havard again took an excellent two handed catch and the Emlyn pack drove second row Dyfed Morgan over the Met line for a second try converted by Davies.
The second half proved to be a very scrappy affair with both sides struggling to string together any sort of continuity. Emlyn started positively and applied pressure on the met line but once again were penalised for not releasing the ball after the tackle in Met’s twenty two.
Very early in the half came a controversial moment when Emlyn winger Kami Nakove was completely up ended in a tip tackle landing on his neck. Emlyn players reacted angrily to the incident and when matters cooled down referee Paul Jones sent Emlyn number eight Brynmor Jones to the sin bin for retaliation but decided no Met player should be punished.
Injuries began to play their part as Emlyn players, centre Llyr Jones and flanker Owain Powell both had to leave the field to be replaced by Mike Jones and Joel James. Morgan extended Met’s lead with another penalty before they were reduced to 13 men following yellow card offences.
Emlyn opted to go for the posts from the subsequent penalties in preference to going for touch and they were rewarded with two successful kicks by Davies to bring the Ceredigion men to within a losing bonus point with ten minutes to go and they looked a good bet to achieve this.
However a back to full strength home team pushed on and they added a crucial try when replacement Luke Northmore ran a superb angle to score by the posts for Morgan to convert.
Williams and his side pushed hard in the final minutes but some stout defending kept them out.
