Lost in three minutes (From Barry And District News)

Lost in three minutes

BRECON 36 BARRY 10

ALTHOUGH the scoreline suggests that Barry were swept aside by Brecon, it was just three moments of sloppiness that presented the home side with the platform for their ninth win out of their last 11 games.

Given this run of success, which included the previous Wednesday's defeat of second-placed club Mountain Ash, Barry's trip to Powys was to prove difficult.

Once again, the unavailability of key players made selection an onerous task for team manager Colin Knapman.

However, he was able to persuade prop forward John Haskell out of temporary retirement, enabling the team to field a fully qualified front row.

And, by including current youth players John Campbell and Owain Brown, Barry were able to travel with 15 men plus two replacements.

During the first 20 minutes, honours were even, with both sides trading penalty goals.

Unfortunately, following Barry's penalty success by Chris Cummings, and with the scores even at 3-3, an aimless tap-back by a Barry forward from the restart allowed the Brecon flanker to snaffle the ball and put his side over for a converted try.

This was immediately followed by a further converted try as Brecon capitalised on a dropped pass to cross beneath the posts, so within three minutes Barry found themselves 17-3 down.

Although Barry rallied and endeavoured to get back into the game, some excellent kicking by Gareth Dodd, the home team's outside-half, kept them on the back foot.

It was as the result of one of Dodd's monster kicks that Barry, with the resulting lineout on their line, managed to lose the throw-in and allow Brecon, for the the third time, to take advantage of another Barry error to score their third converted try and gain an interval lead of 24-3.

The second half saw a much improved Barry display and for the opening quarter, a concerted effort from the pack, with sound support from the halfbacks, kept play in the home side's half.

This pressure finally paid dividends when lock Martin Tanner was able to cross for a try, which was converted by Chris Cummings.

Barry continued to throw everything into attack, but were unable to break a very stubborn Brecon defence.

As the game moved into the closing stages, Brecon were able to take advantage of a tiring Barry side to run in two long-range tries, for a comfortable victory by 36-10.

The only pleasing outcome of this match was that Barry had three sets of brothers in their squad - backs Joe and David McCann, locks John and Matthew Campbell, and flanker Owain Brown and his brother Dafydd.

Owain, who was making his 1st XV debut, had an excellent game and showed great potential.

* Barry's were due to play Mountain Ash at home last night. The final league fixture of the season is Pontycymmer away, on Saturday, May 14.

On Tuesday, May 10, Barry meet Fairwater in the final of the East District Cup at Glamorgan Wanderers RFC, kick-off 7.15pm.