Super Sevens

Well what a day of rugby! I hope that you all enjoyed that as much as us coaches. When we saw the draw we’d realised that we’d been put into the group of death with some fairly decent teams.

We’d trained well and were confident that our skills would get us through.

First up was Cynon Valley, who were quarter finalists in the DC Thomas Cup. We eased into the game nicely and defended heroically before managing to cut through and score. Flying Felix was having none of it though and kept them double guessing with his silky running. Our passing and off-load game was absolute class and we came away with a well deserved draw.

Next up was Newport, who we’d just watched beat Rhymney Valley; another team that were DC Thomas contenders. They were massive but the boys just got into them and didn’t give up. We came away with another draw.

Rhymney Valley we’re our next opponents and we really fancied our chances against them. They caught us napping and managed to get behind us for a couple of tries. We were frustrated in this game as we felt they’d tackled the ball and prevented our offload game. They came away with the spoils in a 4-1 win. The boys were gutted but got their heads up to face another decent team in Pontypridd.

I’d reffed Pontypridd the week before against Swansea Schoolboys and noticed that they were a very decent team. They had a player on the wing who reminded me of Shane Williams and he was rapid. Alex Griffiths managed to tame him though in a superb defensive display. We told the boys to just get out there and do their thing and that’s exactly what they did. The boys were on fire and their passing was genuinely the best I’d seen from any team at the tournament. Isaac was on fire and we’d scored 3 unanswered tries in 5 mins.

Pontypridd we’re in no mood to give up though and came back with a couple of breaks to level up the scores with 3 mins to go. Then it looked like heartbreak as they broke the line again in midfield to score another very decent try. We called the boys in and told them not to give up as there was one minute to go. And then, it happened. We gathered the ball from the kick off and Marvellous Max got his hands on it and started running up left wing like a demented banshee! I thought he can’t score from there surely! But score he did. We were all elated and I felt a massive urge to do a ‘George North Dad’ thing and run onto the field to congratulate him.

For me this summed up the Llwchwr team this year. They never give up and have just got better and better each week.

Next up was Llanelli in the semi-final. They were an unknown entity as we’d not played them or heard anything about them. However, they are Llanelli and we expected them to be strong. We started well and our passing and offload was again spot on. We ran them around and kept the ball away from contact and the boys finished their opportunities well. To come away with a 20-5 victory in a semi-final was amazing.

One of the Swansea Schoolboys dad came up to me after the game and said that Llwchwr were immense in that game and that he thought that we were the best passing team he’d seen.

So, the final was to be played against Swansea Valley. We knew that they’d be a tough side and that they’d be physical in the tackle area and they didn’t disappoint. They got on the scoreboard first but the boys battled hard and got in behind them to level things up. Swansea Valley scored next to take the score to 10-5 and we stuck in there and managed to make a break down the left wing with one minute to go. We tried to stay away from the touch line and keep the ball in play to score but agonisingly the ball went into to touch and the ref blew for full time.

Naturally, the boys and the coaches were gutted but we are immensely proud of all of them. It’s been an absolute pleasure to coach this group of boys and we just hope that we’ve made a little bit of a difference to their game.

We’d like to say a big ‘Thank You’ to the mums and dads for supporting the boys and to Logan and Izaac for coming to support the boys too.

We’ll done boys. It was a blast.

See you all in a couple of weeks time