Celtic League Round 3 Review

By Lestyn - 28/09/03
September 28 2003

This weekend probably went quite far in suggesting that at the moment in Wales we have three fairly strong regions and two not so.Possibly I may have jumped to that conclusion a little to early in the season, but the signs for the Dragons and Blues are not good.

The Dragon's loss at Ravenhill was expected, but the margin of the 37-18 defeat is like the Blues narrow loss in the Borders still unacceptable.Dai Young and Mike Ruddock must be pulling there hair out, as either coach watched their sides fail yet again to the basics well.

After such a demoralising defeat against a side that had leaked one hundred points in their opening two fixtures, it's hard to see how the Blues can get their season back on track. Especially with Edinburgh in the cup next Saturday, the Scot's now coming into the game after a stunning 33-30 win at Donnybrook over Leinster.

Luckily for the Dragons they have next weekend end off after leaking four tries to Ulster. The experiment of playing Ben Breeze at full back didn't quite work, although Gerald Arasa had a bit more success on the wing. Like Leinster did against the Ospreys last week, Ulster found plenty of gaps in a fairly timid defence.

Moving onto the positive aspects of this weekend, the Scarlets and Warriors played out a close encounter at Stradey park. The much improved Warriors could and possibly should have one this one - had it not been their hesitancy to move the ball past Jenks and Corry Harris's rush of blood.

Gareth Bowen continued his good start to the season, the outside half is starting to form a good partnership with Leigh Davies in Midfield. But it was two warhorses who stole the game for the Scarlets, Ian Boobyer as usual did his best to slow any Warrior ball down, and Jon Davies got the vital second half try.

A real nail biter at St.Helens ended the weekend off, a large crowd (for these early day's of regionalisation anyway) saw the Ospreys build up a good lead, with the likes of Andy Williams and James Storey combining to put some tidy tries together.

With either side not trying to kill ball, we at last got see something similar in quality to the Zurich Premiership. A few late tries saw Munster go close to leveling thing's up, aided by the referee, who somehow found eight minutes of injury time. 

Elsewhere the unpredictability of the league was shown again as Glasgow who surprised the Warriors last week in the cup, went down to Connacht at home.

Full details of the weekends Games