Llanybydder 21 pts. Tenby United 31
Tenby United travelled deep into Carmarthenshire to face a Llanybydder side they had not played since season 2013/14 when they thrashed them at Heywood Lane 43-14, followed that up six weeks later with a 31-17 victory in the SWALEC Plate up at Parc Teifi, but surprisingly, and luckily, drew the return away league game, early in the January, 6-6.
With several positional changes from last week’s excellent win against Pontarddulais, and to cover player unavailability, a new centre combination with permit/dual players from Narberth and Carmarthen Quins, Tenby took the pitch confident of maintaining their momentum which has seen them top the league - albeit still very early in the campaign.
The small pitch up at Parc Teifi did not suit the open style of play Tenby had been using in previous weeks and the powerful home eight also disrupted the set-piece, robbing them of an attacking platform, but despite these adversities, it was United first on the scoreboard when Toby Smith slotted over a penalty for a hands in the ruck offence by a home player.
The lead, however, was short-lived as Tenby strayed offside and wing Ross Holder took the opportunity on offer to take the scores to 3-3.
The Tenby running game started to develop, but failed to yield any reward due to silly handling errors, and it came as no surprise that the first try of the game came from a quickly taken tap penalty scored and converted by Toby Smith.
Immediately following this score, Holder was successful with his second penalty and followed this up with a smartly taken unconverted try, which was followed by his third penalty, taking the home side into a fortunate 14-10 lead.
With half-time approaching, Tenby strung together a promising threequarter move from a solid scrum and new recruit Morgan Griffiths breached the home defence with a powerful run to score and with Toby Smith again successful, the Seasiders went into the break leading 17-14.
This was a somewhat justified score by Griffiths as he had been harshly denied what looked like a perfectly good try earlier in the half when the home touch judge (backed by his vocal touchline supporters) convinced referee English that the ball had been knocked-on.
Building on the promising end to the first half, the threes, with both Griffiths and Moritz Neumann prominent, started to stretch the home defence, with the back three of wings Jordon Asparassa and Matthew Morgan along with fullback Johnny Morgan, keen to get into the action at every opportunity.
It came as no surprise that Tenby scored a third try, with Morgan Griffiths romping over for his second of the match, taking advantage of the good work done by replacement Andrew Cooke at the breakdown and Johnny Morgan, who slipped the ball to Griffiths who, despite some desperate home defence, ran in from halfway.
With Smith maintaining his 100 per cent conversion rate, Tenby had reached a 24-14 lead with plenty of time remaining for the all-important four-try bonus point.
However, their task was made more difficult when referee English again responded to the baying home support to send Andrew Cooke to the naughty step for a late tackle, which was marginally late at best.
Llanybydder were still a handful at the set-piece and, with the pressure beginning to tell on the Tenby scrum, now minus Cooke, a fumble at the base resulted in replacement Dion Thomas diving on the loose ball and the conversion by Holder narrowed the lead to 24-21 and it was still a game that could have gone either way.
With time running out, however, a persistent Tenby United grabbed the all-important fourth try, and the accompanying bonus point, as Alex Thomas went over from a pass by fullback Johnny Morgan. The reliable Smith added the extras to make it a 31-21 game, and as it turned out win, to take his match contribution to 16 points... and to raise him to 12th position in Tenby United’s all time top scorers list with 437 points, leap-frogging Kevin Lewis, a stalwart from the 1995-96 era, and an old club favourite in Dean Bowen, who hung up his boots at the end of season 2001-2.
This was a hard fought victory and several lessons will be taken away, especially up front, but coming away from Llanybydder with a bonus point win would have been something the coaching squad would have taken if offered before the game.
The team now has a two-week break from playing, due to a combination of tomorrow (Saturday) being a free league week (with 11 teams in division two there is always one team with a ‘free week’) and drawing a bye in the first round of WRU Plate competition on October 8... with joint league leaders Hendy being their next opposition away on October 15, a game that will need to be planned and worked on during the next two weeks.