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Penallta Youth 20  Pontypridd Youth 17

There is a life-affirming purity to grassroots youth rugby. Players unencumbered by fear and the scourge of over-coaching provide a wonderful spectacle for rugby followers. When two brilliant teams meet up in a tense game of cup rugby, both intent on playing positively and without any prosaic thoughts of ‘safety-first’, the end result is inspiring. Penallta’s cup-tie against Pontypridd Youth yesterday was one of the most magnificent games of rugby any supporter will have seen in a long time.

Penallta drew Pontypridd in the 3rd round of the Welsh Youth Cup, a showcase occasion for arguably the two best youth sides in Wales. In terms of club stature it was David versus Goliath. Pontypridd are one of the great clubs in Welsh history whereas Penallta are new to the WRU, gaining status as a WRU-affiliated club as recently as 2004. Pontypridd Youth solicit a justifiable fear. Their squad is a gathering of all stars, the current the Welsh Youth champions. Ponty were - at the beginning of the season - the clear favourites for a second consecutive Welsh title. A Goliath in Welsh rugby by any measure.

The analogy, of course, doesn’t quite work, because Penallta are no David. Penallta may be a David-like minnow in historic terms, but in recent times Penallta is the great over-achiever in Welsh rugby. Be it 1^st team, 2^nd team or at Youth level, Penallta has won a mountain of trophies since the turn of the millennium, likely more titles than any other club throughout Wales. Nowadays, hosting a Goliath scares nobody at the club.

Meeting Pontypridd so early, in a repeat of last season’s thrillingly close final at the Millennium Stadium, seemed a shame for the competition. Penallta, despite their recent glittering history, entered the game as underdogs. Shorn of so much of last season’s talent, with boys sequestered away by their academy controllers and sadly not made available for a showcase fixture such as this, it is tougher for Penallta to compete. On Saturday, the coaches were unable to field such stellar talent such as Arwel Robson or Max George - both players were, maddeningly, watching the game and running on water from the side - or Ellis Shipp or Pat Lewis. Why on earth anyone up high in the WRU thinks it sensible to deprive the premier national youth tournament of its best youth players is anyone’s guess, but - like the other producer clubs - Penallta has no choice other than to meekly adhere to the obtuse rules.

The availability of all that home-produced, superb academy talent would bolster any side, but Penallta have gotten used to having to do without it. The coaches and management, stoic as ever, maintained a quiet confidence that a good performance from the available players would enable them to at least go toe-to-toe with Ponty, but losing Number 8 and lineout supremo Aled Williams on Thursday night must’ve been a dagger blow to their plans. Pontypridd’s powerful driving lineout was crucial at the Stadium in May, so losing Aled was a disaster. Head Coach Steve Cribb and Forwards Coach Mark Williams reshuffled the remaining pack and went with three open side flankers in the back row. It was a typical Penallta move, sacrificing bulk for mobility. And boy, did it work. From the very first minute, the much-vaunted Pontypridd side found themselves in a battle to keep pace with the relentless Penallta players. The home side hustled, pressured and ultimately prevented Pontypridd from establishing any time on the ball. Pontypridd were a far bigger side and posed a threat through some seriously talented individual players, but Penallta weren’t in the mood to let them settle. What ensued was a coruscating battle of pace, skill and electric ferocity; a game which affirmed above all else that youth rugby in Wales is in rude health.

Penallta set the tone from the kick-off and barely let Pontypridd near the ball for the breathless first ten minutes. Penallta battered the Ponty try-line. Lloyd Bodman and Jack Samuels carried intelligently, offloading with deft skill. Ponty looked all at sea, but managed to defend their lines. After 15 minutes, Penallta only had a 3-0 lead to show for their efforts. It didn’t feel like anywhere near enough. But then hooker Jack Samuels got on the end of a lovely team try, converted by Dan Averiss, and Penallta had a significant lead. But it was the cue for Ponty to hit back.

Both Pontypridd and Penallta scored three excellent tries in the game and one conversion apiece. Penallta’s early penalty eventually proving decisive. Pontypridd’s first try was a team effort, their second and third were individual moments of brilliance. After ceding almost all the possession to Penallta in the first 15, Ponty got a foothold. In their best set of phase-plays of the whole game, they worked Penallta left and right before finally exploiting a gap and scoring out wide. The try was converted to put reduce the deficit to 10-7. Ponty then started showing excellent composure in possession, the whole game, in fact, was burnished with compelling maturity and a heartening desire to attack at pace, by both sides. And there was no little invention either. Penallta built their plays through teamwork, offloads and balanced angles of running in contrast to Ponty’s individualistic style. Ponty did target Penallta’s underbelly throughout the game, throwing their big men at the defence, but Penallta were superb at the choke tackle, holding-up a Ponty attacker on three occasions throughout the game, each time winning a scrum put in to relieve the pressure.

And it was at the scrum where Penallta had a real dominance. Loose head Corey Hewlett was brutally destructive. If it wasn’t for the ‘one and a half metre push’ rule Ponty’s scrum would’ve been annihilated. Their tight head struggled badly and was shoved backwards at dangerous speed. Only the classy ability of Ponty’s Carl Blacker at scrum-half kept things tidy for the away side, because otherwise the scrum was a serious mess for Pontypridd. Technically, Ponty’s scrum was poor, matching the poor technical work of their big  forwards in the carry-area. Too often the Ponty boys carried too high and were turned over by the hungry Penallta players. Penallta’s defence was largely unimpeachable in open play with Ponty barely making a dent from any set-pieces. They were harried badly in the ruck area, another Penallta area of superiorty, where Penallta’s back row were too fit and too proficient for the away side to deal with. Time and again Ponty were turned over, to the delight of the home crowd. Breaching the excellent Penallta defensive excellence took special measures.

Ponty’s Blacker scored an absolute peach to take Ponty into the lead. With the game in swashbuckling mode, Penallta throwing the kitchen sink at Ponty and Ponty replying in kind, Penallta finally made a mistake. Again turning Ponty over in midfield, they failed to clear. Ponty won possession and Blacker, in a wonderful moment of opportunism, exploited the blind side, chipped through and beat Penallta full back Will Toms to the ball for a lovely try. It was a classy moment and one which underlined the reasons behind  Pontypridd’s ‘favourites’ tag in the cup. Despite relentless Penallta pressure, the try put Ponty 10-12 ahead. Penallta had thrown absolutely everything at their opponents, but were still losing. The home side knew that a gutsy effort wouldn’t be enough. Ponty had individual class to burn and Penallta needed to tread carefully.

At half time the two sides took stock. Disastrously for Penallta, Hewlett was forced to leave the field with a nasty looking injury. With Ponty dominating the lineout, Penallta needed to continue their dominance in the scrum. The powerful Hewlett was critical to that. His replacement was 16-year-old Ben Griffiths, a Seth Rogen lookalike who’d been converted to prop in pre-season. It was a big ask for the young man to step-up against the elite, but it’s in Penallta’s DNA to throw young believers with big hearts to the wolves. A key ingredient to Penallta’s continued success is the nurturing and backing of young players. Penallta will always throw in a youngster over an outsider; they will always back their own. Penallta want players invested and moulded in the very spirit of the club, players who eschew the mercenary nomadic route and who dedicate themselves to the cause. The club prides itself on players who come through the ranks and play for a decade or more. The youngsters know they’ll be given at chance at Penallta, in return they throw their bodies on the line in a way a nomad never will. Griffiths is the latest in the long line of those hungry young men who will sweat blood for the club.

Adding to the greatness of the game was the unbelievable tension, each team never extending their lead to more than a score. At times there was a fervent hostility. The huge number of teenage supporters on both sides added a youthful noisiness which was at once humorous as well as borderline boisterous. The referee did a brilliant job of letting the game flow and was unfailingly fair, not allowing himself to be influenced by the barrage of shouted advice from the touchlines. The Pontypridd coaching staff, possibly in a tactical expression of convoluted mind-games, were intent on treating Penallta with lofty disdain. Their surrounding supporters contributed to the hostility, contemptuously haw-hawing at any Penallta mistakes and baying at the Penallta crowd. It’s often the tactic by opposition sides to treat Penallta with arrogant contempt, and you can see the wrong-headed merit in it.. Aren’t that Penallta lot just a bunch of lucky upstarts? No history. No money to spend on players. No influence in the higher reaches of the Union….. why should they ever compete with us?

The disdain is counter intuitive; Penallta raise their own players through the mini and junior section and never use permitted outsiders, it goes against the club philosophy. Every facet of the club is predicated on sustainability and a belief that the philosophy will remain the same whether the club is winning or losing. 20 of the Penallta’s match-day 22 were developed in the Junior section. Penallta is the ultimate producer club. The fact that the Dragons only take an interest in Penallta when they take the players from the club - despite Penallta’s 15 years of sustained title winning excellence with teams stocked with talent raised from within - is a source of baffled amusement in the player’s lounge. Too many clubs resort to vanity when they lose a star player and fear the potential of decline. Penallta don’t; they pick the next cab of the rank and back themselves to develop him into their next star player. It works, as the club has proved time and again. It’s the way all clubs should be run. Perhaps the disdain is borne out of envy.

Not only is it counter-intuitive, it is also counter-productive. The contempt combined with underdog status only drives the Penallta players to excel. If Pontypridd fancied a House of Commons atmosphere on the touchlines on Saturday then they soon found that Penallta are the best in the business at it; even when in trouble. As the second half kicked off and Penallta made another error, this time not sending two chasers after a box kick, Ponty capitalised. Their rapid full-back Joe Davies, took the high ball and sprinted 50 metres through the Penallta defences to stretch the Ponty lead to 10-17. It was an excellent try and brilliantly finished by the young Ponty star. The conversion was critical, a nine point lead would’ve made things extraordinarily difficult for the home side, but classy fly half Rhodri Smith missed, and Penallta were still within a score. The Ponty crowd laid it on thick. In return, Penallta rammed into fifth gear.

What followed most certainly wasn’t in the Pontypridd script. Seven points ahead, with Penallta’s gun-scrummager  injured, their best lineout jumper side-lined and a smaller set of players exhausted from the effort, Ponty should’ve seen out the game. Their baying coaches and supporters clearly thought that was the way it was heading, given the banter.

But with club loyalty comes great spirit and Penallta were incredible in the final 25 minutes. If Ponty had fought remarkably well to hold Penallta at bay during the torrid first 15 minutes, there was nothing they could do to stem the Penallta tide in the final quarter. Penallta broke Ponty’s hearts with the relentlessness of their assault. Whether it be Zak Cusack’s quality box kicks, captain Lewis Alexander’s mesmerising running through the heart of midfield or open-side Jon Viney’s brave and selfless tackling in the back row, Penallta were on fire. Number 8 Joe Thomas, along with Alexander, the best player on the field, led the charge. Thomas was awesome. As tired legs began to ache Thomas just grew in energy. Unbowed, he led the way as Penallta threw everything at Pontypridd. The dam broke when Griffiths, who was everywhere after coming on as sub, finished off another lovely team try. It was poetry for the 16-year-old. How many clubs would’ve gone for broke and given him his chance against the champions? His impact was excellent. He seemed to grow in stature; imperious in the scrum, superb in the offload, utterly fearless. A hero in the making.

Agonisingly, Averiss missed the conversion to level the scores. Other than adding to the frantic biting of fingernails on the touchlines, it made little difference to the direction of traffic. All the play was taking place in the Ponty half.  Thomas and Viney were exploding into rucks along with blind side flanker Charlie Morgan. Penallta were winning possession so quickly from their relentless phases that Ponty could no longer cope. Alexander cut a beautiful line through the midfield and from the resulting lineout, Penallta scored again. Cusack and Averiss threw play first left and then back out right before Thomas - deservedly - grabbed the third try by touching down in the corner. It was exhilarating, the Penallta supporters could barely believe the assured brilliance of the young players, so crystal clear and effective in all that they did, against a backdrop of nervous anxiety around the whole ground.

Thomas’s try made it 20-17 and left ten minutes of torturous, high stakes rugby for both sets of partisan fans. Could Penallta hold out? Or would Ponty finish with one final flourish of class and grab the winning score, as champions often do? In order to do that Ponty needed the ball, but they couldn’t get hold of it. Penallta were far from finished. Instead of retreating into their shells they went for the jugular, scoring their fourth try in the other corner through Will Toms, after a skilful offload from substitute centre Charlie Wright. The referee gave it, and it appeared to be game over, until the Pontypridd linesman intervened, to the collective disbelief of everyone along that section of the crowd. The linesman said Toms had hit the corner flag and the referee, with a wry, arched eyebrow, did the decent thing and took his touch judge’s advice. The video evidence later proved it was a nailed-on try, and any latent hostility in the crowd suddenly turned nuclear. Remarkably, given that there were by now a distinct lack of level-headedness among both sets of fans on the touchlines, the players resolved to carry on with an admirable sense of clear-headed calm.

Ponty did grab one final chance immediately after the disallowed try, when they won a penalty and kicked to the Penallta corner. In a bizarre decision, instead of calling a full lineout and using the one weapon they had which Penallta struggled against, the driving lineout, Ponty chose a shortened line. The unusual choice caused such indecision that the referee awarded a free kick to Penallta. The Ponty crowd were as dismayed by the decision as the Penallta crowd were after the disallowed try, and the relief among the Penallta fans was palpable. With just two minutes left, Penallta managed to keep possession and finally, to the incredible delight of the supporters, who invaded the pitch as the whistle went, Cusack kicked the ball out of play to scenes of absolute joy.

Ponty players littered the field with heads in hand. Their blind side flanker Morgan Burgess, one of the best players of the field and a brutal hard-nut who got up the opposition’s noses all day, looked absolutely broken. He at least showed an admirable magnanimity in defeat, shaking the opposition’s hands and conceding that the better side had won. It was a magnanimity sadly lacking among Ponty’s two coaches, who refused to shake hands with any of the Penallta officials, instead sullenly retreating to the clubhouse to watch the game on video. Pontypridd is a club with a great and lengthy history and the lack of grace in defeat by their coaches was a shame, given the unalloyed brilliance of the game.

In the end, Penallta deserved the win. They were undoubtedly the more cohesive, tight team up against an impressive squad of super-talented individuals. The uncompromising energy and togetherness of the Penallta play was too much to cope with for the bigger, less mobile Ponty players. In Alexander, Penallta had a player who consistently created something out of nothing with his balanced footwork, and in Thomas they had a masterful, marauding exocet, who the away side couldn’t cope with across 80 minutes. Thomas’s father Gavin, the irrepressible Penallta backs coach, will have difficulty knowing who to be most proud of.

The victory was a proud and deeply inspiring one for Penallta, Proof further, if any were really needed, that even in the face of increasingly insurmountable odds, the club has something special, something almost gloriously intangible, which enables it to compete and beat seemingly superior opponents time and again. And not just defeat those opponents, but to defeat them with a conveyor belt of purely home-grown talent.

It is no understatement to say that Penallta Youth’s performance on Saturday was one of the greatest displays ever put on show in the club’s blue and gold. It was a fabulous win; a remarkable feat of guts, skill, relentless teamwork and endeavour against the champions of Wales. The coaches and players deserve all the credit, and the WRU, if they sent anybody along to watch it, would be immensely proud of the talent on show. With Penallta 1sts, another side shorn of last year’s title winning talent and operating with youngsters from last year’s youth, later winning 82-22 against Risca, to extend their lead at the top of Division 1, and the 2nds, the beloved F Troop, maintaining their top of the table status with an away win against Dowlais, Penallta had another day to remember.

Despite the difficulties and despite the shadows of Goliaths all around, the mighty-hearted underdog of Penallta marches imperiously on.

Martyn Rowe