News

RGC U18s can't focus on Sundays 66-5 defeat to the Ospreys, as the Age Grade Side have another tough away trip this weekend at the Dragons.

 

Following the heavy defeat on Sunday the team is obviously disappointed with the scoreline and in some aspects of the performance.  Performance Manager Josh Leach will be looking for a response this week -  "The important thing for the group is to put Sunday’s result in perspective and understand why we weren’t competitive on the the whole”.

 

“With such a short lead into these preseason RAG games preparation really does have to be well structured and certain areas prioritised. We haven’t made the progress we’d have liked to with the U18s group due to low attendance for a variety of reasons, and found ourselves having to revisit things constantly. Sunday’s result highlighted how important preparation is going into these high level competitions. There’s many talented players in this group, who will begin to show their best when they train together consistently, but until this happens the performances will lack consistency."

 

RGC were a young side with only five 2nd year U18s in the match day 23, due to various unavailabilities and injuries. The experience of playing against a majority 2nd year U18s Ospreys group, who won the RAG Championship last year, will have served as a great learning curve for our players.

 

Missed tackles and lack of cohesion in defence was the source of the majority of the Ospreys’ points, and in fairness to the Ospreys they took the opportunities well. However, in many other aspects of the game RGC were competitive and created a number of opportunities to score themselves.

 

Some strong individual performances from Shaun Thomas (Bethesda RFC) and Will Sanderson (Wrexham RFC) saw RGC’s scrum dominate for much of the match. Captain Shaun Owen (Caernarfon RFC) tried wholeheartedly to lead the defensive effort with some strong tackles, as did Sam Earl-Jones (Colwyn Bay RFC) covering as the last line of defence.