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| Valley Miners 12 Blue Bulls 62 | ||
| The Bridgend Blue Bulls continued from where they left off last season with a crushing 62-12 victory over the Swansea Valley Miners at Ystalyfera. Last seasons Welsh Conference Champions and Harry Jepson Cup Winners were without many of last season’s stars due to injury and Rugby Union commitments but still managed to outscore the hosts by 11 tries to 2. The Bulls, captained by Paul Williams got off to a shaky start and found themselves 6-0 down after just 5 minutes when Swansea’s Pat McLernon went over for a converted try. The superb Karl Hocking got the Bulls back on level terms 10 minutes later with a great score which John Williams converted but Swansea’s Gareth Jones kicked a penalty goal to give the home team an 8-6 lead late on in the 1st half. Things were not looking good for the Bulls at this point and Swansea seemed to be getting on top but an amazing 3 minutes late on in the 1st half saw the Blue Bulls score 3 cracking tries, all coming from 50 or 60 metres out. The 1st saw Gareth James run rings around the Swansea defence to put the Bulls into the lead for the 1st time and a minute later Dan Williams crossed under the posts. The outstanding John Williams added the extras with his trusty boot before crossing himself to give his |
side a 24-8 half time lead. The Bulls ran riot in the 2nd half and within a minute of the re-start Dan Williams went on a tremendous weaving run to claim his 2nd score. Bulls captain Paul Williams then put his team past the 30 mark before further tries from Geraint Lewis (2), Dan Shaw, Gareth James and Mike Williams put the Bulls on 62 points with 10 minutes to go. Bridgend then had Karl Hocking sin-binned and it was Swansea who claimed the final score of the game through forward Peter Gooding. Despite a slow start the Bulls were in excellent form, the Miners found it difficult to cope with the strength and power of Karl Hocking and John Devereux while the likes of Dan Williams, Gareth James and Craig Fox ran rings around the home sides defence. But the Bulls star man was John Williams who kicked 9 out of 11 goals and scored a try to give him a personal tally of 23 points. With the likes of Kevin Ellis, Alan Bateman, Nathan Strong, Paul Morgan and Mark Davies all missing this encounter the Blue Bulls look as if they will once again be the dominant force in the Welsh Conference, but they will have a much tougher game on Sunday when the Cardiff Demons visit their Coychurch Road ground for a 2:30pm kick off.
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