Talywain RFC - 8

Blaenavon RFC - 3

FOR their last league game of the season Blaenavon RFC travelled the short distance to play local rivals Talywain RFC at Emlyn Park on Saturday, knowing that they had to put in a good performance to beat the league chasing home team.

The visitors started off well with the pack starting to dominate the loose play setting up some good runs for Josh Faletau and lee Baker, which required some very stout defending by Talywain.

The line out seemed to be going better with Andrew Trumper winning good quality ball which the Blaenavon backs were eager to run at their Talywain counterparts.

Clayton Gullis and Sam Saunders put in some excellent clearance kicks but despite some good attacking Blaenavon could not break the home defence.

The Blaenavon Pack were really putting Talywain under pressure with the front row of Marc Watkins, Steve Howard and Josh Faletau, causing them all sorts of problems, leading to a penalty which Clayton Gullis had no problem converting.

This stirred Talywain into action and they now started to play coming close to scoring only to be repelled by the Blaenavon back row - Lee Wright and Matthew Davis having superb games.

Blaenavon slipped up giving a penalty away on the touch line which Adam Creese did well to convert to make it 3-3 at half time.

The second half saw more of the same in a tight and well fought game which was played in terrible conditions.

Talywain scored a well worked try even though the initial forward pass from their scrum half eluded the referee.

Adam Creese scored in the corner, though he failed with the difficult conversion. Blaenavon fought back well and came close to scoring on several occasions but failed at the last

hurdle.

The last five minutes saw Blaenavon throw everything into the attack with some real class passages of play but to no avail.

The match was marred by serious injuries to Alan Scammell and Sam Saunders in the dying minutes of the game which took the edge off a good solid Blaenavon performance.

Back in the clubhouse the Talywain chairman kindly presented Blaenavon chairman Alan Jones with a £100 cheque for the Ken Jones Statue Appeal.

Next season Blaenavon will be running a Youth team. New players and this season's under 16 players should contact Neil Bartlett (07969062381), Dale Wathen (078752108325) or Rob Swinn (07881503169).