Well he's had the off season to sharpen his pencil and now the "Master of Suspense" is back with his first novel of the season. Here's Gareth's first report of a new season.
Match Report, pre season friendly V Llanishen 20th August 2022
A new season, a new addition to the management team, new players, but still the same crappy old jokes, regurgitated in the match reports.
A new look Llanharan team took the field in the leafy suburb of Llanishen, to lock horns with a team that beat Llanharan 76 – 15, the last time they played. The opening salvo from Llanharan was all action, brutal and full of effort, but yielded absolutely diddly squat. Morgan Parsons showed everyone, he has come to the Dairy Men to make a mark, and his first contribution was to smash the catcher from a Mr Boombastic kick off. The chocolate boy himself had a fine performance in all aspects of the game, before being sin binned in very unusual circumstances.
Starting in the 2nd row with Morgan was the second of the twin towers, Shaun O’Rorke, who showed his class with a great performance in the line out, as well as around the pitch. His first action was pure quality as he took a difficult ball and produced a pass of accuracy and deftness, to a player who wasn’t there.
The 3rd debutant was Jack Walker, who provided accurate throwing (his target was 6ft 8, and my grandmother could have hit him with ping pong ball) but this should not detract from a fine debut. He is a livewire and will be a good addition to the squad.
The next player to make his debut for Llanharan was the mullet wearing, back row, nasty boy Ieuan Williams, whose claim to fame is that he can swear in 6 different languages. His robust style of play will add to the talent pool that already exists in the club.
The final person to play the 1st of, hopefully, many games for the Black&Blues was Owen Davey. Owen, straight out of youth had a 15 minute stint in the second half, and showed glimpses that indicated he has a bright future.
Although, Llanharan started strong a lot of their play was lateral and lacking intensity. That, combined with some appalling discipline helped Llanishen make their way into the away side’s 22, and eventually cross the whitewash to take the lead 7 – 0. With the wind in their favour, Llanharan continued to bombard the Llanishen try line. Something had to give, and eventually, with all the guile of a bin man who is late for dinner, crashed over, to level the scores.
HT 7 – 7
Playing into the wind in the second half, Llanharan upped their game, improving both ball security and urgency. There was some strong running by captain caveman (Lee Arthur), Chris Osborne (the person you do not want to get stranded with, midway through a 6 hour bender) and lord of the mines of Moria (Lloyd Gregory). On top of that the Llanharan scrum obliterated the Llanishen scrum. It was after pressure on a home side scrum that Leon Burton took a short break from irritating the referee, to harass his opposite number. The confusion that resulted from the retreating scrum led to a try for the second of the beef burger brothers Ieuan Pring.
After a clumsily dealt with restart Llanishen came roaring back to level the game at 14 all. Then deep into the 2nd half two barnstorming runs, the first by Lee Arthur (the person who looks like the before photo in a make over programme) and the second carry from the offload to the honey monster, Owain Howe, resulted in the big red scoring, what would be the winning try
Andy Price on the third anniversary of the discovery of his verruca stated – “Yet again words of wisdom from Gareth Nicholas at half time saved the day.”
New Team Manager Derek Cashmore, stated “That’s my son, I wondered what he did on a Saturday"
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