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Cobras edge a close battle!

Cobras 14-0 St Peters

Happy new year to all the players, fans, coaches and managers at Caerphilly rugby club, thanks for all you do and would you mind carrying on doing it for another year please?

It was a pleasure to get back to rugby after such a long break,  with all the kids saying “I’ve had enough of playing on my Xbox, what I need is the beep test in the pouring rain” or words similar to that. 

A very tough first game back though, as we welcome the players and officials of a really strong St Peters team to the field of screams.

First half  Cobras 0-0 St Peters.

I’m not sure we’ve had many 0-0 halves, but this score perfectly summed up the first half.  Both sides struggled to create try scoring opportunities, our attacks tended to fizzle out as the St Peters excellent rush defence closed our passing game down completely, whilst the same was true for opponents as well.

We were turned over at ruck time quite often too, a lesson to the team not to get so isolated with lone runners. One such error led to a brilliant counter attack, which was only stopped inches from the line by a sensational Shane tackle.

If this was a boxing match, St Peters would have edged the half, but it was great that rusty as we were, our battling instinct hadn’t left us and we gave everything to keep the score level.

Second half Cobras 14-0 St Peters

St Peters started this half strongly too, attacking down the left side before knocking on just before the try line.

From the resulting scrum Keagan went across the pitch before passing the ball on to Jac G.  Jac was confronted by about four opposing players straight away,a turnover here and St Peters will surely score,  but somehow he jinks his way through them, four down but 11 to go and he’s still in our 22….Incredibly he beats a few more players, sees some daylight and is away…it’s a length of the pitch try and as good as you will see in the rest of 2023.  He’s out of breath running it and the large crowd are out of breath cheering it. Superb.

The team are fired up now, starting to compete better at ruck time and growing in confidence.  The ball comes to the Elvis of the valleys, he’s in his own half, but embarks on one of his mazy runs to score under the posts, brilliant Shane! It may well be that two candidates for the best try of 2023 have been scored in the first game of the year!

We continue to edge the game, special mention to young Hwyel, playing his first game, a year up, a really strong forward performance today.

Bang, Ollie Bates rips the ball and he’s clear to score…but, no, the ref thinks there has been a slight knock on into the opposing player. Unlucky Ollie.

St Peters don’t give up, they throw everything at us in the last ten minutes, but can’t quite get over the line.

The ref blows up and two tired teams shake hands, this was a cracking match played in very good spirit between two evenly matched sides.

Man of the match

Was Shane, for a sizzling performance throughout the game, dazzling tries, try saving tackles and hard work around the ruck,  Superb 👏 

Love and hisses 

🐍 🏉 💚