Narberth 16 pts. Llanharan 8

Narberth did just enough to grind out a 16-8 win over Llanharan in a rather drab match, which will not live long in the memory.

After two exciting games on the trot against RGC at home and Bargoed away, Narberth supporters were looking forward to another entertaining game.

From that aspect, the match was disappointing, partly due to a quite strong wind blowing downfield from the cricket ground and the uncontested scrums in the second half.

Players and supporters are not big fans of uncontested scrums, but they were necessary from an early stage after the interval when the replacement prop for the red-carded Joe Jones was injured very quickly after he came on the field.

The Otters took the lead with a penalty kick from fly-half Ianto Griffiths after six minutes.

With the wind at their backs, the Otters were prominent in attack, although the backline was not as fluid as it has been in recent weeks.

Centre Morgan Griffiths, though, has a knack of conjuring up a score out of nothing and he did so again after 15 minutes.

When a Narberth attack inside the Llanharan 22 appeared to be blocked, he produced one of these special tries which few other players could score as he ghosted his way through the defence of the Dairymen.

Another penalty by Ianto Griffiths extended the Narberth lead and minutes before the interval, Griffiths added his third penalty to extend the lead even further.

Four minutes into the second half, Joe Jones was red-carded when he punched a Narberth player in the face and his replacement was injured quite quickly after coming on to the field.

The Otters were experiencing the same difficulty as the Dairymen had before the break in trying to play rugby against the wind.

Kicking out of hand proved something of a lottery, with the ball ballooning up in the air and sometimes coming back towards the player who kicked it.

The visitors had the first breakthrough when flanker Rory Martin-Smith got the touchdown for an unconverted try after good work by the Llanharan pack.

The Dairymen got closer to the Narberth points total when scrum-half Nicky Theaker kicked a penalty.

The game was by no means over and the Dairymen were only two scores away from winning.

When Otters fullback Jonathan Morgan received a yellow card, the consequent long distance penalty by Theaker sailed to the left of the posts, to the obvious relief of the Narberth players.

There were no further scoring opportunities for either side and the only other incident was a yellow card for Llanharan lock Huw Thomas.

Otters director of rugby, Jonathan Dodd, was not a happy man after the match. His post-match comments were short and to the point.

He said: "We played awfully and it was an awful game of rugby where the skill levels were very poor.

"From a Narberth point of view, the only positives came from the first start for replacement scrum-half Luke Rogers and the debut appearance of Rhys Davies as replacement wing in the second half."

He then added: "The only other positive was that we won!"

The Health Centre Balcony Suite match sponsors, the Friends of Narberth RFC, selected Narberth lock Adam Clark as man-of-the-match.

The Folly Farm Otters Holt match sponsors were the Pwll Trap Boys and the match ball sponsors were the Narberth RFC Former Players Association Reunion, Narberth RAOB, Eleri and Friends and Narberth CP School.

Narberth fielded: Jonathan Morgan, Nick Gale, Rhodri Jones, Morgan Griffiths, Tomi Jones (Rhys Davies), Ianto Griffiths, Luke Rogers (Rhys Lane), Sean Lloyd (Steffan Jones), Dan Smith, Tom Slater, Adam Clark (Timoci Kaumaitotoya), Alex Jenkins, Gareth Bateman (Lewis Wood, Stuart Worrall and Steffan Phillips.