Whitland romp into top three

May 16 2004 Marilyn Rees, Wales on Sunday

WHITLAND secured third spot in the First Division behind champions Llanharan and runners-up Maesteg with a hard-earned 20-10 victory over cup giant-killers Brynmawr in the West Wales sunshine yesterday.

In the end Whitland were good value for their success against the side which dumped mighty Cardiff out of the Konica Minolta Cup in a major sensation earlier in the season.

Centre Lee Glanville was always a livewire for the West Wales side and he went over for a splendid try.

Fly-half Aled Davies also crossed for a touchdown, as well as converting both of the tries and landing a brace of penalties.

For Brynmawr John Williams crossed for a try and full-back Craig Mapp converted it and fired over a penalty.

There was far more excitement on the scoring front down the road at Narberth where the Otters crushed Rumney 61-37 in one of the highest-scoring matches of the season.

They took their points tally for the campaign to 1,081 and with nine touchdowns have now scored 144 tries, some nine more than Whitland despite finishing a place below them in the table.

Man of the match was Kati Tuipulotu who crossed for three splendid tries in a game which yielded a total of 16 tries.

Simon Daniels was also in sparkling form as he crossed for the first Narberth try and also kicked eight conversions to take his tally to 21 points.

Rumney actually shocked their hosts by taking the lead after only two minutes when Joe Offside went over for a try but Narberth soon moved into the driving seat.

For Narberth, apart from the Tuipulotu tries and Daniels points, there were touchdowns also for Andrew Jones, Daniel Evans, Gareth Bennett, Jason Jennings and Craig Hawkins, while Offside went over twice for Rumney with Alex McIntire and Paddy O'Neil also getting a brace and Anthony Jones bagging one try. There was just one conversion for Paul Bull.