Fixture

Match Result:  Old Penarthians 22 CIACS 7

Last week Old Penarthians received some very sad news when they heard that former 1^st XV captain Brent Muggeridge had passed away in his native New Zealand after a brave fight against illness.  The Club will always remember Mugsy as a man of tenacious spirit, wearing shorts and flip flops in all weathers, and he will be missed by all who knew him in the rugby circles of Penarth and beyond.  The Club’s sympathies go to Tena, Luke and Tanyka and his memory was recognised with a minute’s silence before the games played by the 1^st  XV against CIACS and the Youth XV at Penygraig.

It was somewhat poignant that Curtis Taylor who played rugby with and against Mugsy was on the touchline representing CIACS at the weekend and he joined in the reminiscences. The match itself would have been one in which Mugsy would have revelled with plenty of forward battles punctuated with a few outstanding threequarter movements.

And it was one of those moments that started the scoring for Old Pens after 8 minutes when a line out was won cleanly by James Beaton and Tom Hillman passed to Steffan Crimp.  Crimp fed Rhys Lakin who passed inside to Alex Lewis before he sent out the scoring pass to Evan Morgan. Rhys Goodfellow failed to convert.

The next 20 minutes was played with plenty of effort by both sides but was punctuated by too many handling errors that failed to ignite a large crowd of spectators. The half did however finish with some excitement when Crimp fielded a high ball in his own half.  He ran froward and chipped ahead. The resulting bounce was kind and when he put foot to ball again, he found Morgan in support to touch down under the posts.  Goodfellow converted for a 12-0 half time lead to Old Penarthians

Penarthians started the second half and were again on the attack led by the outstanding Rhys Thomas who caught the high kick off and set up the threequarters after drives from Tim Downing and Tom Sidford.

It was however CIACS who started to dictate the tempo of the match and after 15 minutes a series of scrums on the Old Pens goal line gave them their just reward when the referee awarded a penalty try and the score was 12-7

As the half progressed the Old Pens used their subs bench and Chris Poole, Jake Thomas, Gareth Boulton, Lee Brennan and Nige Rogers were introduced to the play and it was Poole who made an immediate impact when he took the ball from Hillman after a forward drive from Beaton and Rhys Thomas to break a tackle and pass to the overlapping Goodfellow to score. The conversion was unsuccessful

With CIACS tiring it was the extra experience of the Old Penarthians that began to tell and with both Rhys and Jake Thomas excelling in the tackle more space was available to the threequarters and with typical aplomb Poole burst out of his own half, chipped ahead caught the kick and raced 30m to score.  With the conversion again unsuccessful the final score was 22-7 and Old Pens progress to the next round of the Malcolm Thomas East District Cup competition.

At Penygraig the Youth XV were also victorious when they completed back-to-back wins in Cardiff Region League Division 2.  The 19-7 scoreline was made up from tries by captain and hooker James Reynolds, man of the match Elliot Salmon and replacement back row forward Charlie Wheatley.  Jac Jones converted two of the tries in a match which showed the growing confidence in the team which is melding together three age groups into a very cohesive unit

On Saturday Old Penarthians 1^st XV travel to Cefn Coed for a 2.30pm kick off in a WRU Division 3 East Central (B) league fixture.