Match Reports 09-10

Rocks IIs v UWIC East District Cup

St Peters second side played Uwic in the East district cup last night, which can only be described as a classic. St Peters fielded a strong outfit boosted by some talented youngsters.

The first half was basically St Peters kicking loose ball which Uwic capitalised on by running wave after wave of offensive play. However the rocks defensive back line led by Joe Davis held firm and only allowed one try in the first half. This defence was what kept our boys in the match and it has to be said that from 1-15 including subs, all players defended like they were protecting their young.

When St Peters did find them selves in the opponents 22 they lacked inventiveness, but at breakdowns they were bossing the game, and from this they were awarded a brilliant solo effort try from captain Owen Lloyd. This was then converted by the David Mitchell to make the scores 7-5 to the rocks. From the following kick off, following more loose kicking Uwic stampeded into the 22 area and eventually ground out a forwards try just left of the posts. Conversion missed making the score at half time 10-7 to Uwic.

After a rallying cry at half time , queue excitement. St Peters came out in the second much as they did in the first, although playing into Uwics game plan, the defence from forwards and backs still could not be faulted. However another unanswered forwards try from the visitors made it 12-10. The game continued to be end to end stuff with no team having the edge to finish the game off.

After a scrappy ball from a Uwic scrum Sion Ellis hacked through to put Hugh the fastest winger in the world into a foot race with the Uwic full back, skinning him for pace and footing the ball through, Hugh just lacked the composure to touch down. However a try was awarded following the next scrum to make the scores 15 -12 to the rocks.

The next 15 minutes were a tense affair which eventually erupted into a 30 man brawl, which we dont condone.

Uwic capitalised on the extra forward and scored a converted try in the corner making the final score 19-15. The boys had chances towards the end but it was not meant to be, tired bodies and loose hands got the better of them and Uwic would have breathed a massive sigh of relief.

Congratulations to all who played, to take an outfit like Uwic to the wire like we did last night is something that not allot of teams could ve done. The commitment and effort was there in abundance. You boys are true rocks.

February 27th 2010

Penarth 20-5 Rocks

The top of the table clash provided a good spectacle with a large enthusiastic crowd. Both sides early on both in attack and defence played with commitment but little guile.
Penarths stuff it up your jumper tactics gave them an early lead with a converted try and penalty. St Peters replied with a nice drive towards the Penarth try line. S. OBrien sniped over for the touchdown. The try went unconverted. The umpire played the advantage well, not always to the delight of the enthusiastic and vocal crowd. The Rocks players and supporters fascination in barracking the ref hasnt worked for forty years and should know by now that the man in the middle will not change his mind nor swing in the favour of the baying pack.
Penarths forwards were too cute and played the ref well. After a charged down clearance Penarth scored a converted try. Some disciplined drives and slick close-handling moved to give the rocks some hopes. Although unfortunately, the last pass went to ground more often than not.
Penarth deserved their win yet the final score 27-5 flattered them.  The open side flanker for Penarth played the conditions and the ref with consistency. R OBrien tried to muster his troops by leading from the front. G. Bater`s fast hands from the breakdown improved the flow of the game, although he had not the big runners in the attendance by the time he entered the fray. The ability to change the game while in transit still needs addressing.  Both sides no doubt will be feeling the effects on Sunday of a bruising encounter.
I see no reason why both sides should not go not up come the end of the season.

Many thanks to Denver for submitting this report.

January 23rd 2010

Rocks 1st XV 19-7 Tylorstown Photos

This was probably the best game of the season so far where the Rocks in Second place entertained third place Tylorstown and after a few weeks lay off due to the weather, both teams fancied playing a bit of rugby. The game was certainly helped by 80 minutes of sensible refereeing which meant sensible warnings were distributed rather than a succession of yellow cards and so both teams retained their full quota of players for the whole of the game.
Ryan Jones opened the scoring with a penalty for St. Peters when a clean lineout win for the Rocks deep in the Tylee half forced a mistake from the travelling team.
Tylorstown responded quickly with a well worked forward try up the bob bank end which was customarily converted by the superb kicking style of the Tylee No.13.
The welcome return of Kris Baggsy Barry secured excellent lineout ball all afternoon, which forced Tylorstown to throw to the front. Mr Kozels however had other plans for his afternoon and repeatedly disrupted the throw with timely one handed wins against the head. Without regular secure lineout possesion, t was difficult for Tylorstown to run any meaningful plays after their opening try. Baggsy and Archie snaffled just about everything.
An unfortunate injury to Luke Powell (back) forced him to leave the field and be replaced by the returning James Huntley whose first scrum certainly gave the Tylorstown 8 something to think about as they retreated 6 yards in as many seconds. Welcome back James! Further mistakes from Tylorstown gave Ryan Jones further opportunities which he dutifully slotted to take the half time score to 9-7 to the Rocks.
The second half was more of the same for St. Peters who repeatedly took the ball on from the base of the scrum gaining valuable yards and also through the clean hands of the centres Sonny and interchanging Ryan Jones and Stephen Ireland. All three moving about in their comfortable positions opened up gaps in the away defence and the Rocks score was sure to come soon. When it did however, none of the home supporters were quite ready to see a training paddock move excecute so effectively. Matthew Taylor had replaced Paul Davies and further positional changes as Ryan Jones moved to full back was causing confusion among the Tylorstown back line. Clean Baggsy lineout ball on the opposition 10 was distributed with pace to Stephen Ireland, which allowed runners gallore to drift and turn, before a long pass into the breadbasket of Flyin Ryan coming in from full back. One slight of hand dummy was all that was needed to allow him to drift inside his winger and round off under the sticks. Who converted it? To take his tally up to the full 19 for the afternoon Ryan Jones! Matthew Khan entered the fray replacing hgh-flying Archie and gave the forwards another lift for the final ten minutes.
The most surprising occurrence of the game was a missed penalty from the Tylorstown No.13 in the first half. He had single-handedly beaten us at Penrhys Park earlier in the season with 5 out of 5 superbly struck penalties and a solo quick tap penalty.
Top form discipline from St. Peters gave him no further chances to make ammends for this uncharacteristic error. Lets hope we can repeat this performance regularly for the remaining games.

Rocks 2nd XV v Old Illtydians

Its not over till the fat lady sings! Losing 13-18 at the Harlequins with five minutes to go, the second XV would not say die. David Mitchell had kicked superbly all afternoon to nullify the Illts attacking line, but still the Rocks were trailing. A last ditch effort from Conky and Matthew Murphy (who both claimed the other one scored) were having a cwtch as they were driven over the line both holding the ball as it was grounded. Uncharacteristically, a missed conversion saw the spoils shared. Good effort.

Pentyrch youth 10-13 Rocks Youth.

The only try for St. Peters Youth came in the first half as did all the points in the game, from Jo Milford. Penalties and conversion by James Morris. This is the first win of the season for the Youth, who are clearly committed to sticking together and working hard for each other. This years crop of youth players face older opposition week in week out, but the improvement being shown again week in week out shows that as they stay together they will mature and develop into a determined and reputable team.
Cliches of the day:

1. They were a credit to themselves Don Gallagher
2. They ground out the win Don Gallagher
3. Jo Milford. Hes the missing link weve been looking for Don Gallagher
4. First win much needed onwards and upwards Don Gallager
5. Get off my plane Harrison Ford.

Rocks 1st XV 33-6 Treherbert
High Stepping Hat-Trick for Sure-footed Sean!

Patience broke down the Treherbert defence at the Harlequins yesterday oh yes and a hat-trick from Sean OBrien!
A strong wind blew in favour of our visitors in the first half, but it was the home team who started the scoring. A quickly taken tap penalty by Scott OBrien made him a good fifteen yards before good handling by forwards and backs put older bro through for his first try of the afternoon. Ill discipline at the breakdown allowed Treherbert their only points of the rain-soaked day taking the lead 5-6 with a brace of good penalty kicks at goal.

Seans second came from clean OBrien handling. Top quality channel one ball was delivered from the forwards who pushed Treherbert to their limit all afternoon. The ball was distributed with a well-timed pass from Rob to Sean who lined up his man and glid (past tense of glide) past his man to score under the sticks. There is no substitute for pace!

Sean insisted after the game that John Pattersons try from his own 10 yard line was an assist. Is he claiming that one as well? Top finishing from Mr Pattison made life easy again for Matthew Khan who worked tirelessly around the pitch and claimed a well deserved 4 conversions.

A proper forwards try followed with good lineout ball secured on the Treherbert 22. A well constructed driving maul straight off the training field gave Kris Barry a tidy second row try and equally importantly secured the bonus point.

And then Sean scored again.

So where does that leave us in the league. Rocks are currently joint fourth place on 16 points, but with a greater score difference over Brecon and Llandaff North, top fourth spot is ours.

Rocks 2nd XV 22-18 Llandaff North
Archie passes to set up winning try!

All the following information was provided by Gareth Norman and Mike Butler

I was awesome today! So was I! I cant believe we came out on top. Well I did pop one over from the half way line. True.. True (followed by a gesture which involved holding the left elbow in the palm of the right hand). And did you see OB (the old one) who did that dive to score quality! Yeah brilliant dive.

The game was scrappy though wasnt it. And the referee had a good go. He was young like but orright! An we all went nuts at the end cos theres no way we should have won like. They were on top all day and then we pinched it at the end. Yeah and I popped one over from like the half way line wasnt it. And you got my date of birth wrong.

Did I tell you about my try. Go on tell him. I got the ball and sold a wicked dummy and handed off this guy woooff and slipped in under the posts. Awesome. And Lenny got the winning try. It was special cos Archie had the ball and you wont believe it, but he passed it when we had this like overlap and Lenny got it and like scored. And Archie had passed it honest. You should have seen it. And then we all went nuts. Is that it? Can I go back to my beer. Yeah awesome dude.

Match reporters Norman and Butler.

17th October

Rocks 2nd XV 42-28 Llandaff

Report by James Mullane
Two gang put in another strong performance, winning 42-28 against a strong Llandaff second string. Some excellent rugby was played in the first half but unfortunately petered off in the second. However we can’t really argue with over 40 points being scored, maybe a bit more focus defensively and some better decision making in certain areas of the pitch and this game would have been a lot more to nil.

Stand out performances came from Tom Nolan, Paul Macarthy and Mathew Murphy who had man of the match. In the backline Gareth Norman and Gareth Bater deserve a mention for some excellent play. Along with Joe Davis, also shining once again this week. An honourable mention should also go out to Mark Dunleavy brother of John and son of Joe for lasting almost 25 seconds before laying someone out after coming on as a sub. He then followed this up by knocking on 5 out 6 opportunities, still got it old boy..

The seconds have made a steady improvement over the last couple of weeks, from watching from the side it is clear to see that this outfit takes the game a lot more seriously than in years gone by and this can only help strengthen the firsts team prospects. Well done boys.

14th November

Rocks 2nd XV 14-11 Pentyrch

Report by James Mullane
The seconds played Pentyrch on Saturday in very open and enjoyable game to watch. The weather held off for the duration of the game which allowed outside half Dave Mitchell to control the game with a brilliant display of kicking and ball distribution. Gareth Norman scored the only try of the game for the rocks after some good forward play and some gutsy rucking. The Pentrych team were a strong, confident outfit. This did not rattle the rocks as they took the game to the opposition from the very first whistle, led from the front by Lee Imperato, Dave Price and Huw Parry Davies. The pack was then strengthened by the Assasin when an injury to Gareth Norman meant that Spud Murphy was to move from Flanker to play almost every other position in the backs. Â After some guidance from the coaching staff the Rocks were told to be patient , kick to the corner and wait for Pentrych to make mistakes. This was executed to perfection, with forwards and backs causing turn over ball at will.

These turnovers were turned into the points by Mitchell, who was the man of the match. Man of steel needs to be given to Captain Paul Obrien. Paul received a deliberate stamp to the back of his head which later required 10 stitches. However Paul would not be kept off the field by this nasty injury after being bandaged up by Phil Carr he came out of the dressing room to complete a ballsy performance. Other mentions should go to Dale Waith and Rees Davies for solid performances and also to Joe Davies for being a massive presence in the middle of the park as always. The Rocks now move onto the next round of the east district cup. Final Score 14-11

Tries- Gareth Norman (1)

Pens- Dave Mitchell  (3)

 Report by James Mullane

5th December

Pentyrch 17-35 Rocks 2nd XV

Report by James Mullane

Another strong performance from the second string sees Pentyrch get well beaten on their own patch. Boosted by several new faces, St Peters put together some great phases of rugby. This cumulated in the first try being scored by superman Lenny the length Davies. Lenny was joined in the centre by Shawn Obrien, this made life difficult for the Pentyrch boys to deal with. Time after time the 12 and 13 partnership broke the line with some excellent running from both players. The game itself was good to watch, bearing in mind the difficult conditions both sides kept the ball moving nicely. Some stand out performances included Chesney Hawkes playing his first game at hooker. This only solidified the rocks pack and we may have to drug test Chesney after seeing him the shower, you would nt like him when he’s angry.

Tom Nolan was also a presence in the open as was nice guy Nicky Kelly who seemed to be quite hungry during the game… Paul Mac seemed to be more aggressive this week, after tending to his cattle all week you think he would be quite tired. Contrary to belief he actually ran for 80 minutes and gave the Pentyrch number 8 a very hard day. 5 tries in all , 2 for Puppy 2 for Length and 1 for Tom Nolan all converted by the impressive kicking of Dave Mitchell.

The Rocks controlled the game from start to finish, a very good performance from every player on the park, now lets play some one other than Pentyrch.