North Wales Cup final: Caernarfon 46 Pwllheli 15
May 3 2010 by Rob Griffiths, Daily Post
CAERNARFON completed the first half of league and cup double yesterday as they claimed a convincing 46-15 win over Pwllheli to lift the North Wales Cup.
The Cofis were never behind in the final, played at Bangor’s Cae Milltir, running in six tries with man of the match No8 Rhys Evans notching a hat-trick.
Caernarfon now head into next Saturday’s final Division One North match of the season knowing they need a bonus point at home against Bro Ffestiniog and hope that Nant Conwy don’t claim a winning bonus point at Ruthin to claim the title.
But for now Cofis head coach Ieuan Jones is just enjoying lifting the cup.
“We were saying let’s just concentrate on today,” he said. “It’s all about cup rugby and what happens on the day and we haven’t got to worry about bonus points or anything like that, we’d have been happy with the one point win.
“I think Liam (Leung) had a fantastic game, I thought he was unlucky not to get the man of the match award. Rhys (Evans) is a class player as I’ve always said, but you need players to do the spade work for you. It’s nice playing out in the back-row and getting all the glory, but you need players in the engine room to do all the work.
“I was just very pleased for everyone at the club, we’ve worked hard for the last 10 years to set up a good structure with people working hard at junior and all levels and we’ve got players coming through and it makes such a difference. If we win the league next season I can retire a happy man.”
Caernarfon came quickly out of the blocks and were ahead inside seven minutes as No8 Evans came up with the ball following a well worked driving maul.
Dylan Gwyn added a second try almost immediately from the re-start following a barnstorming run by Leung, both of which converted by Kelvin Morris, before Evans added his second on 18 minutes, Morris again slotting over the extras.
Pwllheli hit back with two tries of their own through Gethin Roberts and Rhodri Scott (both of which unconverted), before Morris added a penalty to restore Caernarfon’s advantage.
And it got better for the Cofis two minutes after the interval as Rhodri Owen dived over off the back of a ruck.
Morris converted and then slotted over the extras to his own score after throwing a dummy and running through a tiring Pwll defence.
Evans completed his hat-trick with 15 minutes remaining, but Caernarfon were reduced to 14-man for the remainder of the game after Mark Vaughan was shown a harsh red card by referee Huw David for a late and high hit on fly-half Dylan Llyr.
Pwllheli’s Dafydd Myrddin crossed for a try late in the game, before Morris kicked a second penalty to put the icing on the cake.
Jones added: “I think we controlled the game very well and we stuck to our game plan very well, and had a very good first 20 minutes which maybe knocked the stuffing out of them. But fair play to Pwllheli, they stuck to it and they forced us into some mistakes and game back into the game with a couple of very good tries.
“We started the second half with the same kind of spark and overall I’m just very pleased. As a coach when things you do on the training pitch work on the field then it’s a bit of a coach’s dream.
“Pwllheli dug deep and gave us a good game. Their hooker Dafydd (Myrddin) and Dylan (Llyr) their fly-half both had really good games, but I think we just had too much fire power for them on the day.
“I thought Mark (Vaughan) was very unlucky, I asked the ref and he said he has caught the player but it was not an intentional one, but he has caught him and if it was then that’s fine, we have to accept it.
“It does take the gloss of it slightly, because Mark was absolutely gutted, he said he was sorry and he did try go in for him, but that the player ducked and he caught him high. He’s gutted, he didn’t mean to catch him high.”
