Blackwood Stars 0-48 Caerphilly RFC
Friday March 17, Blackwood
As the season enters the latter stages, Caerphilly travelled to Blackwood to play their previously postponed National League Division 3 East A match from January. The weather again did its best to disrupt the fixture as the rain fell, but Caerphilly dug in and secured an important win in their promotion charge.
A spirited Stars side did their best to keep the visitors at bay for the first 20 minutes, as they held the buoyant Caerphilly side to nil until outside-half Matthew Hurley found a chink in the armour to break through for an unconverted try.
Caerphilly’s next score came through No8, Matthew Williams, as he burst through to go over. The visitors quickly added another through winger Gareth Dare minutes later.
Dare’s back partner Lewis Wallacot secured the bonus-point try on the stroke of half time, and Hurley finally worked out the difficult conditions to land the conversion out wide.
The home side found themselves trailing by 22 points at the interval, and things failed to improve as they found themselves camped in their own half for the remainder of the game.
Caerphilly ran in four more tries as Willacot and Williams grabbed braces, and full-back Tom Candy and replacement flanker Gary Davies got on the scoresheet. Hurley rounded off the match with three conversions.
Victory promoted the Castlemen to third in the league with two games in hand over Chepstow and Hartridge above them.
• Match report by Mark Tamplin of Caerphilly RFC.