Valley Cougars earned a vital 54-38 win at Sheffield Hallam Eagles on July 4 to keep their position at the top of the Conference South.
After slipping up last week against a Nottingham team competing with the Cougars for top spot, Cougars’ coach Dafydd Hellard told his players that only a win was acceptable. And a win they got, albeit a hard fought one.
The game started rather evenly with both sides testing each other out, Sheffield were pressing on the Cougars line when a hopeful miss pass was intercepted by Lee Goddard, who fed the ball inside to try scoring machine Danyl Davies who out sprinted the cover tacklers to score under the posts. Ben Jones converted.
The Cougars started to get a foothold in the game and extended their lead with a well worked Dean Higgs try and a powerful Adam Morgan finish.
Sheffield got a try back through Jordan Parry before a training ground set piece play from the Cougars resulted in a well worked try, finished in the corner by Yousif Suliman.
Sheffield fought back with three more tries, with Donald Kudangirana, Josh Willmott and Jack Arnold all crossing. Carl Strickson converted all three to make the half time score 24-22 to the Cougars.
The Cougars came flying out of the blocks in the second half and a neat little pass from stand-off Marcus Webb found Adam Morgan who cantered in under the sticks.
The remainder of the second half saw sides swap tries with Kudangirana and Willmott each adding their second and Harrison Foster crossing for the home side with Strickson kicking two more goals.
For the Cougars, Higgs scored his second of the match and Adam Morgan completed his hat-trick in unusual circumstances as a one on one rip 40 metres out saw him sprint through.
Four points up going into the last ten minutes, the Cougars stepped up the pace and cemented the game after a try by Ethan Coombes and another 80 metre interception by Danyl Davies with Ben Jones converting to make it nine from nine with the boot.
Cougars’ Coach Hellard said: “Today’s performance was just what we needed, the boys have trained really hard this week and we were excited to get back on the field.
“Sheffield are a class outfit the most pleasing thing today was seeing what was missing from last week’s performance and that was that we wanted to win more than the opposing team.”
Cougars’ next game is at home to Torfaen Tigers on July 18.