Neath scrum-half Chris Morgans was delighted after helping his side complete a British and Irish Cup double over Welsh Premiership frontrunners Bedwas last Saturday.
The Blacks won 17-9 thanks to their three tries and Morgans, who scored one of them, says that there’s nothing his side would like better than to win their final game of the tournament against Stirling County this Saturday at The Gnoll (kick-off 2pm) to finish with the second best record in the group.
“Every game is important to Neath,” he said. “We all knew that Bedford Blues were going to be a lot better than anyone else as they’re competing to get into the Aviva Premiership and they’re taking the Cup seriously to keep the roll going.
“For everyone else it was probably always about who would be second best and we believe we can achieve that.
“We’ve done well since the start of December. I don’t think we performed to the best of our ability against Ponty a fortnight ago and I didn’t think we showed how much we’ve improved over the last month or so. We put that right last Saturday against Bedwas and we want to keep it up this week against Stirling especially as we lost up there in Scotland. We want to get one up over them as we know that if we’d had performed as well in the second half as we did in the first, we’d had won that game too.”
Morgans says that the whole team was pleased with the win over Bedwas especially as the Caerphilly-based side have been doing so well.
“A win away at Bedwas is always tough to get especially this season,” he said. “We had a few boys out and a number of permitted players in so it was a great win really. I think we controlled the game virtually throughout. Most teams have a purple patch but we kept theirs to a minimum amount of time and they were forced to kicking penalties.”
With seven tries and countless assists in 13 games since returning from a start of season injury, Morgans has had a good personal last few months and was rewarded by being nominated for the Premiership player of the month in both November and December.
“It’s always nice to have personal accolades,” he said. “But that’s only really been because of the upturning fortunes of the team. Over the past month or so we’ve been playing a lot better and there’s a lot of our team who have been playing well.
“I put it down to our training improving. We do extra weights and fitness sessions now and that’s made a big difference to us. At the beginning of season, we’d lose our way in the last 20 minutes of the game. Now we seem to be holding out for most of if not the whole the 80 minutes.
“We’re good enough to creep up the league and also make a serious challenge to the WRU Cup which starts for us next month. We were lucky enough to have a bye in the first round, then a few nice draws and we could be back at the Millennium Stadium again.
“But for now, it’s all about beating Stirling this Saturday and hopefully we’ll get big support at The Gnoll - that’s important to us as players. We’re playing a lot more of an attractive band of rugby over the last couple of months and scoring some good tries. Come along down to The Gnoll this Saturday and give us a big boost to keep our momentum up for when the Premiership starts back again in February.”
Tickets for Neath v Stirling County in the British and Irish Cup on Saturday 19th January (kick-off 2pm) cost just £12 for the main stand or £10 for anywhere else in the ground. Children aged 16 and under are free of charge. Check out www.neathrugby.co.uk for more details and follow the club onhttp://www.facebook.com/NeathRugbyFootballClub or https://twitter.com/NeathRugby.
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