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Saturday September 18^th 2021

Cross Keys 54 – 6 Maesteg Quins

Believe it or not, there have been worse days for the Quins at Pandy Park. Then it was Keys United who put the Quins to the sword. This match it was the main side, filled with a number of quality regional Dragons Academy players who did the damage and would have made their regional coaches nod in great approval.

Odds on winning matches if the necessary physicality is absent are virtually nil, at any standard. Cross Keys emphatically won the breakdown contest due to their overwhelming physicality, with open side Morgan Koloi competing masterfully.

Another key attribute in the host’s victory was the manner in which the sliced through the Quins defence. Running excellent angles in midfield and in more cluttered broken play, the Keys opened up the visitors with near surgical precision.

Trouble was brewing, when home centre Tetley poured through on half-way and went under the posts. He also converted.

Back on one of his old stomping grounds, Owen Howe immediately reduced the arrears with an offside penalty.

Not that everything was dour for the Quins. The scrum certainly showed up well, with this contest going the visitors’ way. Additionally, apart from line-out blips late on, this set-piece was functioning well.

A benign Quins cross-kick became nothing more than a lofted kick-pass to Keys’ wing Lewis Bates who, from inside his own half evaded a host of tacklers and won the kick-chase to dab down. Tetley converted.

Howe doubled the Quins’ total, but soon after Chris Johnsey sauntered over as part of a driving maul for another try and two additional points were added to Tetley’s pot.

It this were a competition fixture, Cross Keys would have notched up a bonus point in under half an hour, when the ever-impressive Koloi showed good support and was on hand to swoop over.

The Quins passing was often slick. Dylan Morgan got the ball away with pace and accurately. Harry Morgan-Grant made a few half-breaks and some great hurried, pressured clearances. However, being under pressure movements ended fruitless. The Quins were screaming out for continuity, but all hopes of this were extinguished by Keys' breakdown superiority.

Quins debutant, No.8 Ryan Jones made a couple of nice trundles in his first game of senior rugby, against stern opposition. While Owen Howe’s experienced and cultured hoof put great distance between the Quins try-line and the opposition.

Scrum-half Rhys Meredith dodged, ducked and darted over. A fifth conversion added further emphasis to the home score.

In the second-half, wing Dan Hitchings was put into space and scorched along the touchline and over.

Skipper Tom Lampard was fired over from a short-range driving maul and the conversion pushed Keys towards a half century of points.

Quins were pressing the Cross Keys line and a pass was cruelly intercepted by Carrick McDonagh who cantered the full length of the field to touch down under the posts and pass the fifty points mark. Tetley’s tee bagged another conversion for a seventeen points haul.

The young Quins team have tasted emphatic defeat and will learn that the intensity of physicality at the breakdown and mauls will need to be significantly boosted. Learn from this experience, which they will and all will be well.

Next Saturday Tata Steel visit South Parade, in the final WRU Championship Cup Group match. Quins sit on top of the group rankings and want to get back on track.