Swalec Bowl – Round One

Llandybie 28 Cefneithin 23

Llandybie entertained Cefneithin in an entertaining Swalec Bowl first round fixture that could have gone either way.

Llandybie opened the scoring after five minutes when centre Tom Rees rounded his opposite number to race home from 30 yards.

Cefneithin’s repost was a try by right winger B Williams, followed by a soft touchdown from the hosts’ viewpoint by full back S Walker, who raced down the left, skipping past three tackles.

The hosts got back on terms with some good forward play and a try wide out on the right by flanker Aled Tomasson, who was involved in the move three times.

Cefneithin missed a penalty before Llandybie had a player sin-binned for a foul tackle, allowing Cefneithin fly-half Richard Watts to make up for the previous miss and secure the three points.

Llandybie lost hooker Rhys Cann with a twisted knee, replaced by Jonathan Davies who returning from illness for his first game of the season.

Cefneithin came in from the side in a ruck and Luke Yelland kicked the resultant penalty to tie the scores yet again.

Tom Griffith kept his back line moving with accurate long passes and full back Josh Williams scored a very good try, coming into the line and dummying his way over to put Llandybie 18–13 ahead at half time.

The hosts went down to 14 men again soon after the restart when their prop was binned for an off-the-ball incident.

However, good defence by Rhydian Jones, Lyndon Davies, Tomasson and hard working Dan Wigley kept Cefn at bay.

Llandybie turned down a penalty soon after and went for touch but the move frittered out.

Cefneithin countered with a well-worked try from their left wing replacement, converted by Watts.

Yelland then fired over another penalty to push the homesters 21–20 ahead, but missed another soon after.

Gareth Jones took some big hits at centre for LLandybie but retained possession while winger Rob Smith was proving a handful with the Cefn centre knocked cold attempting a tackle.

Good driving work by the home forwards took Llandybie through three or four phases and created space for Tom Rees to canter between the uprights, converted by Yelland.

A further penalty by Watts reduced the arrears to five points but the visitors ran out of time.

Next week, Llandybie will look to manage their growing injury list when they host Nantgaredig.