Last Saturday, Whitland Youth travelled to Aberystwyth for a league match. An hour before kick-off, the weather turned dramatically from pleasant morning sunshine to strong winds, heavy rain and hail.

Although the rain had stopped by the first whistle, the wind remained very strong, blowing down a saturated pitch. With these conditions, it was always going to be a difficult game, with defence against the elements key to victory.

Playing against the wind in the first half, the young Whitland team's tackling was ferocious, winning the breakdown and allowing their backs to take the game to the home side at every opportunity.

Despite some very robust play and the very strong wind in their favour, Aberystwyth hardly got into the opposition 22 metre area. When they did use the elements to kick long and deep into Whitland territory, the fullback Jerome Colon, who was excellent all afternoon, was comfortable on the ball and happy to run it back, linking with backs and supporting forwards to deny Aberystwyth the ball and any clear chances of a score.

With five minutes still to go until half-time, the Aberystwyth side looked to have gained a big opportunity to break the deadline when the influential Whitland captain, George Griffin, was yellow-carded for a tip tackle, but such was the visitors dominance and discipline at the breakdowns that the home side, despite the strong wind at their backs, did not have a single kickable penalty opportunity during the first half.

At the half-time turnaround there had been no score to either side.

Whitland, in the second half, had the wind advantage and soon made it count. Winning a penalty almost in front of the posts, Steffan James stepped up to put over the first and what proved to be the decisive score of the day.

With the Whitland eight by now in total command in all areas of the game, their talented backs tried to run the ball in the most difficult of conditions and, although gaps did start to appear in the home defence, they could not get the final scoring pass to hand.

With centres Jamie Harris and Geraint Jones running hard at the defence, the tiring home side were by now giving away penalties, mainly for slowing the ball in the ruck area, which resulted in James attempting a further three shots at goal. However, the difficult swirling wind took the ball off target.

With time running out, the Whitland forwards tried one last driving maul off a lineout and, although they did get the ball over the line, the referee decided they had not grounded it and the final score of a very hard fought game where both teams gave their all, remained at 3-0 to the visitors.

The Whitland team was: Gethin Lewis, Richard Waters, George Kerr, William Ebsworth, Aled John, George Griffin, Charlie Preece, Dewi Davies, Rhys Cudogan, Steffan James, Geraint Jones, Jamie Harris,Will Creamer, Llyr Ebsworth, Jason Colon.