Llangollen began their North Wales Super League campaign with a visit to Harlech. It was going to be a tough afternoon for the Tower Field side as the Gwynedd side had not been beaten at home for 2 years combined with the wind blowing hard from the Irish Sea.
The visitors began the brighter of the sides with the Llan pack stamping their authority on the home side in the scrum and loose. This pressure gave Llan chance after chance but they could not quite breech the Harlech line, until another driving maul from the Llan pack had the visitors on the back foot and outside half Richard Jasper crossed in the corner, he failed with the conversion attempt. Llan continued to apply pressure on the visitors with good powerful forward play and incisive runs from the backs with centres Gareth Jasper and Tom Stevens causing the visitors many headaches. It was one of these incisive moves that lead to Llan's second try as Richard Jasper supporting a Stevens run broke through and dotted down to see the visitors in to a healthy 10-0 lead, the wind out did Jasper with the conversion attempt again. The home side rallied on the stroke of half time and some fine 15 man rugby from the half way line saw them finally breech the Llan defensive line to score, this was converted and the sides went into the break 10-7. Llan had to make a slight re-shuffle with fullback forced off with an ankle injury. The second half began with the home side starting where they had left off keeping the ball alive but some good kicking from Scrum half Mark Price and Richard Jasper kept pinning them back. This continued for most of the half until stand in full back Ian Leckie showed so speed with a good break out wide before being halted on the home sides 22, quick ball was produced from the ruck and scrum half Price saw a gap in the home sides defense and raced through to score. The conversion attempt was missed and Llan knew they only had a couple of minutes before securing the win. They managed this comfortably as the home side seemed to have the wind knocked out of their sales with the third try and the final score remained Harlech 7 - 10 LLangollen. Coach Ian Morris said after the match "We knew we would have a tough game down here today and it was not made any easier by the conditions or the fact that we had not played for 3 weeks. We did though show some good rugby and the scrummaging performance, I don't think the Harlech front row will want to see Matt Rogers and Steve Houghton again in a hurry.I am pleased we got a win in our first game of the competition, it's a fantastic chance for us to play against the best teams of our level in North Wales and I know that the myself and the lads are chomping on the bit for the next games".
LLangollen 2nds made it a double for the club on Saturday afternoon with a 29-27 win against Mold 3rds. The Anderson brothers were the stars of the show with Axel bagging 3 tries and Dave 1 with 2 conversions also on the score sheet was fullback Dan Jones who capped off a fine performance with a try. Team Manager Einion Davies said afterwards "it's lovely to have these games, we try and have a game every month and it gives some of the older players a chance to have a run out as well as giving the younger guys who are coming through valuable experience".
