Whitland Youth 12 Aberystwyth Youth 38

After losing their opening game to a strong Narberth Youth side, Aber Youth faced top-of-the-table, unbeaten, Whitland Youth last Saturday.

To make the challenge even more difficult, Aber had to play away from home and were missing some of their regular players.

In the corresponding fixture last season Aber Youth had been crushed by 45 points to 7 by Whitland, so to come away with such a resounding win was all the more impressive and great credit must go to the squad of players who made the journey on Saturday, and to their coaches.

The visitors started in a very spirited fashion, well-led by captain Osian James. Early pressure led to their first try, scored by centre Rhys Willets-Jones.

The second try, by fullback Gwion Hefin, soon followed; neither was converted. Whitland upped their game and replied with their own opening try, also unconverted. Aber showed great determination by striking back with Rhys Willets-Jones’ second try, converted by outside half Euros Lloyd.

Aber’s dominance continued and Ioan Evans scored Aber’s third try also converted by Euros Lloyd to give Aber a halftime lead of 5 – 24.

Whitland started the second half more aggressively but strong defence from the visitors frustrated them. Aber’s efforts were rewarded with a fourth try from centre Ben Breeze. Lloyd added the conversion to increase Aber’s lead to 5 – 31. Whitland were then made better use of their bigger forwards to create a converted try to close the gap to 12 – 31.

Aber’s strong team performance was capped off with a well worked move which saw fullback Gwion Hefin delivering a well-timed pass to Owain Pugh that enabled the pacy winger to score the visitors’ final try under the posts. This gave birthday boy Lloyd an easy conversion to close an excellent win for his team of 12 – 38.

This win has now placed Aber Youth in fourth place in the Scarlets/Pembrokeshire Under-18s league.

This fairly modest league position disguises the fact that they have now beaten two of the three teams above them and have a points record of 91 for, and 50 against after three games.

Also, they have played one game less than the top two teams. All this has raised the confidence level of the Youth squad and their coaches for achieving a top-two place by the end of the season.