Team – Llandovery
Position – 4th
Llandovery RFC finished their campaign in a respectable 4th place for a second consecutive season after finishing the season with a record of 16 games played, 9 won, 2 drawn and 5 losses.
The Drovers made an indifferent start to their league campaign with a home 29-20 victory over RGC, followed by a 37-21 away loss to strugglers Ebbw Vale, before a 40-13 bonus point victory at Church Bank over Bridgend Ravens.
Llandovery’s home run came to an end on November 2nd when they were defeated 9-3 by Newport, this was followed by a 33-31 away defeat to Merthyr before the Drovers got their season back on a track with a hard fought 16-14 victory away to Swansea.
Llandovery followed this up with another impressive win against Pontypridd (18-8) before seeing their winning run end abruptly when table topping Cardiff were victorious at Church Bank (20-25). The Drovers then drew 13-13 with high flying Carmarthen Quins in a festive regional derby.
The story of Llandovery’s season was that they were unable to sustain a winning run, however at the turn of the year the Drovers did go on a three game unbeaten run with wins away at RGC and Bridgend Ravens sandwiched between a home draw with Ebbw Vale.
The three-game unbeaten streak was ended by Llanelli at the end of January when the Drovers fell to a 24-21 away win in a Scarlets regional derby. However, this was the catalyst for Llandovery to go on their best run of the season before it was suspended in mid-March. The Drovers picked up impressive wins against Carmarthen Quins away, and Merthyr and Swansea at home to put them 4th in the table, hot on the heels of Quins and Aberavon in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
It was unfortunate for the Drovers that the season was suspended at the time that they began to hit form, Number 8 and captain Richard Brooks said “This season will definitely be a season to forget for the Drovers. Even though we finished in 4th position we struggled to gain any real momentum and were inconsistent.”
“There never seemed to be a consistent block of games where we could really build our game management and match fitness. This was due to the inter-regional U23 fixtures, the Rugby World Cup and the Six Nations. Add to that the amount of games cancelled due to adverse weather, at one point we found ourselves four games behind leaders Cardiff and were always looking up the table.”
“It has certainly been frustrating on the field also, every game we lost was within a score and could have won pretty much all of them. I am still very proud of how the squad has strengthened within, we set a target to finish in the Top 3 and I’m sure as the weather improved and the pitches hardened, we certainly could have achieved that.”
Llandovery will be hoping to use their strong finish to the 2019/20 campaign as a steppingstone to next year’s campaign.
“We will be seeing a few key players move onto other things and I’m sure Euros (Evans) and the other coaching staff will bring in quality, but our goal is to always finish in the top 3. When preseason eventually starts, we can re-asses where we are and how we look as a squad and then pinpoint some more specific goals.”
By Adam Cleary.
AWC SPORT 