Fixture

On the hottest day of the year by far, Mountain Ash Youth welcomed Ystrad Rhondda Youth to the Rec for the Blues North Youth Cup semi-final. Ystrad, recently crowned WRU Youth Bowl champions, looked a very useful unit - big, well drilled, and full of fire during their warm up. Mount were without their strong blindside flanker Owen Jenkins (concussion), and with no forward substitutes were going to be up against it taking on the big Ystrad pack, but the Young Firm have shown before how tenacious they are. Ystrad took the lead with an early penalty but Mount responded. After some good forward play, scrum half Morgan Cartwright broke down the blindside and passed inside to flanker Mitchell Barnard who scored near the posts. What then followed was an extraordinary period of play which saw Mount dominate for 40 minutes, spurning chance after chance. Two tries went begging with balls knocked on over the try line. Some brilliant play by forwards and backs failed to produce any points. With 15 minutes left, after a series of penalties, Ystrad eventually got into the Mount half and, against the run of play, scored under the posts to lead 10-5. If there’s one thing which this Mount team has shown all season it is spirit. From a maul on the halfway line Josh Davies shrugged off two or three would-be Ystrad tacklers and some lovely interpassing between forwards Daniel Phillips, Cameron Davies and scrum half Morgan Cartwright saw outside half Ethan Conway score under the posts, outside half Morgan James converting, to make it 12-10 to Mount. The Young Firm continued to dominate and from a ruck on the Ystrad 22, the ball was quickly moved along the backline to centre Jamie Long who burst through the Ystrad defence to score under the posts, James once again converting to close the game out and secure a brilliant win for this Mount team who go onto the final against Treorchy.