A good deal of gardening had to be done on the Ruthin pitches to make them playable after a considerable amount of rain on Saturday morning but despite the conditions Ruthin and Bala put on an entertaining game. Bala had to withstand a good deal of early pressure from the Blues and went 3-0 behind with a penalty goal from fly half Nathan Jones after 12 minutes. The visitors though were always dangerous and after a period of attacking play and a missed penalty goal went ahead with a try from prop Tomos Hughes converted by fly half Owain Aled. The Blues returned to the attack and regained the lead with a try from flanker Alex Pope converted by Nathan with a few minutes of the first half to go. Again play swung to the home side’s half and the Blues had to defend well to prevent a further score before the whistle blew to end an evenly matched first half with Ruthin just ahead at 10-7. Shortly after the break the visitors evened up the score at 10-10 with a penalty goal and then after a further five minutes the game was stopped because of an injury to a Ruthin player. After the restart Bala went 6 points ahead with 2 penalty goals. After defending well against a concerted Bala attack the Blues returned to Bala’s 22. For the last 15 minutes Ruthin mounted wave after wave of attack and although barely more than 5 yards from the try line for much of that time were repelled by Bala’s defence albeit desperately at times. Eventually the ball was cleared to midfield and the whistle blew for full time at 16-10 to Bala. Despite the Blues fine attacking play in the last quarter they had to be satisfied with a losers’ bonus point.
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