News

West Mon welcomed old friends St Julians to the Stad de Skew for the first of this season's three warm up games.

The home pack contained four new faces in the starting line up in the form of Sam 'Cookie' Cook, Ben Cunnington, Dai "trigger' Smith and Leighton Jones who all contributed significantly to a pleasing 36-12 victory.

If there is still plenty to work on, there was also plenty for the coaches to be pleased about with the the West Mon scrum being particularly effective whilst another feature was the number of turn overs won by the home side in which another debutant Lewis Bacon was prominent.

First half tries came from new captain Luke Shelton after a blind side burst by his vice captain James Reid, and the dynamic Jamie James. The visitors replied with two of their own efforts for a 12 all half time scoreline.

The second half saw plenty of changes to the playing personnel and it was good to see the return of long term injuries including a lean and mean looking Bobby Cundick and Craig Weaver. (The writer is particularly looking forward to the release of that caged up beast Luke Rawlings over the next few weeks)

Despite the changes, things really started to come together and the home side scored 4 excellent tries, the pick of which came from the flying Ty Watkins after well timed passes by full back Craig Buffin and Simon Davies on his return to the club.

Others came from Trigger, who finished off a slick handling movement after an initial burst of speed by Elliot Bodenham, Luke Royal and the evergreen Dean Jones.  Three conversions came from the boot of Robbie Baldock.

 The second half also saw the introduction of the powerful Connor Witcombe, Jordan Clark and Scott Morris as the coaches took the opportunity to give all of the match day squad an opportunity to impress and with 20 minutes to go another debutant in Sion Griffiths entered the fray.

The players have been working hard pre season to improve the level of fitness and this was certainly evident as the home side defended their on line for the last 10 minutes of the game to deny the visitors a score.  Indeed in its own way, this was as pleasing as some of the attacking flair showed earlier.

All in all a decent start but as my old teacher used to say, “can do better”

Dewch ymlaen Gorllewin

Footnote

Great to former scrum half Huw Werrett in attendance whilst on a visit home from Australia