Fixture

After the recent narrow defeat to Abertillery Croesy returned to winning ways with a well-deserved victory in a hard-fought encounter with Pill Harriers at Woodland Road.

The first quarter of the game was a very stop-start affair with the referees whistle dominating proceedings as neither team was able to settle into a pattern of play and defences were on top. Croesy lost No.8 Garin Eldred early to an ankle injury. Eventually Croesy conceded a penalty just outside their 22 when the referee adjudged a tackle from centre Scott Copsey to be high. The Pill outside half converted the penalty attempt for Pill to gain a 3 point lead. Croesy responded and started to dominate.  This led to one of the Pill props killing the ball at a ruck, an offence which resulted in Pill being reduced to 14 men for ten minutes. Matthew Entwistle levelled the scores with the penalty.

Despite being down to 14 men Pill managed to hold out almost for the whole ten minutes when they finally succumbed to the pressure and Haydn Simons fed Luke Loder who running a smart line cut through the covering Pill defence to score from close-range. Matthew Entwistle converted the try. This was the last score of the first-half which closed with Croesy leading 10-3.

The second half continued the pattern of the first-half with defences dominating, although Croesy came off better with the kicking exchanges. Pill struggled to get out of their half for long periods despite having most of the possession and it was Pill who conceded the penalties to allow Matthew Entwistle to maintain a 100% kicking record for the day with two further penalty goals extending the lead to 16 points to 3.

Pill launched themselves for a final assault to try and snatch the game in the last 10 minutes and were eventually rewarded for a long period of pressure with a try and penalty goal. With 5 minutes to go and six points difference, the crowd became nervous but the Croesy defence held firm not allowing Pill the room to mount a threat to the Croesy line. After a number of solid hits with replacement Sam Cook and captain David Davies showing up well, Pill spilt the ball on their 10 metre line and replacement wing Lewis Hinwood kicked through and gathered racing through under the posts leaving the Pill efence trailing behind. Matthew Entwistle kicked the conversion with the final kick of the game.

This was an excellent team effort with all the players involved showing up well. Mentions should go to James East making his debut from the bench and Luke Loder for scoring his first try for the club.

The team now look forward to successive home games against Cwmbran in the Ben Francis Cup and Pontypool Utd in the league over the next two Friday evenings.