The Dragons U18s last night beat the Scarlets to reach the final of the Regional Competition, where they will play the Blues on Wednesday 18th January at St Helens Swansea, 7.30pm kick off.
On what was a nervy evening for both teams, with the result so important, the quality of the game failed to live up to the near perfect conditions on Rodney Parade. A tight affair in the first half, with defenses aggressive and dominant, saw the game enter the final quarter with the Scarlets leading 3 - 6 with two penalties from Jack Maynard cancelling out one from the Dragons Ethan Davies. Eventually, with ten minutes left the Dragons forward dominance paid off when Hallam Amos (pictured above) was put over in the corner to score and result in a 8 - 6 victory to the Dragons. Forwards Coach Rob Sidoli reflected 'We were a little rusty out there tonight as we haven't played together for seven weeks. However, I felt we were pretty dominant in the set piece and contact area and it was only a matter of time before we were able to turn that into points. There were a lot of errors in our game from an attacking perspective but I'm confident we can iron those out before the final against the Blues next week. We are very much looking forward to the fixture.'
The Dragons U16s had a less happy evening as they lost to the Blues North in Abercynon which ends their chances of reaching the knock out stage of the competition. The Dragons led the game 3 - 14 at the interval through tries from Keegan Bale and Taylor Dimmick. However, the second half was a different affair with the Blues players dominant and ending up eventual winners 18 - 17. Colin Brennan, the Team Manager stated 'The coaches and players are bitterly disappointed with the result, especially off the back of the good performance in the first half. However, there were a number of individual performances that showed the players have developed through the programme and we are confident that they will progress into future international age grade players.'
