NARBERTH Under 17s booked their place in the final of the Mike Fry Cup on Saturday (Apr 23) as they beat Aberystwyth.
It was a hard fought encounter between two strong and well-drilled teams and they produced an excellent display of rugby at the Lewis Lloyd ground.
Aberystwyth arrived with a good u16 and u18 record and were expected to deliver a stern challenge which proved to be the case.
Narberth u17, playing together for the first time, produced some short periods of excellent rugby in the first half to produce an opening try for James Price which was well converted by Fraser Jones.
From the restart Narberth worked No.8 Kyle Day onto the ball who made good ground before Price came onto the ball in support before off-loading to Wil Nicholas, who was making his first appearance in the pack at flanker to finish off a length of the field play, again converted by Jones.
Aberystwyth came back with sustained pressure and great ball retention to work a try under the posts.
The lack of game time together was evident for a period but after the half time break Narberth got their game shape working and produced some excellent integrated play adding two further tries for Price.
The best of which being a slick backline move that saw Fraser Jones feed a well timed pass for him to streak through the defence for a touch down under the posts and a try for the powerful Tom Monk, playing his first ever game at loose head prop.
Jones was successful with 2 of the 3 conversions and slotted penalty in between the tries bringing the Narberth scoreline up to 36.
There were some significant performances throughout the team with Joel Davies and Yori Morgan leading from the front George Jones, u16 skipper, maintaining his high performance standards in the older age group and Aeron Pritchard, Owain Thomas, Owain Holgate, Ollie Hough and Rhydian Jones all making significant contributions on their debut step up from the U16s.
The standout MoM performance came from ‘new’ forward Wil Nicholas whose defence, support lines and double digit turnover count made him a unanimous choice for the Narberth coaches.
The final will be played in Pembroke on May 6.
