Behind the scenes with West Wales Raiders Manager Peter Tiffin

Last weekend was a very busy time for everyone at the Raiders as on Saturday we travelled to Coventry & on Sunday we took the shorter trip to Builth Wells.

On Saturday we knew we had to take a much stronger squad than we did in the week before as Coventry Bears were going be a very physical side.

We travelled with a full team, however as luck had it, Rhys Davies pulled his hamstring in the warm up, and 18th man Jamie Davies stepped up for his first senior game.

The first 10 minutes saw us loosing a further 2 players as our captain Nathan Beck and centre Dafydd Phillips injured themselves in the tackle area, this then left us with 15 men to complete the remainder of the game.

The game did not disappoint as both sets of squads gave their all in a fantastic game of rugby league, the game had nearly everything with an array of tries from both teams, yellow card, full length of the field try but the end was where it was most tense as the scores were tied, Coventry decided to go for a drop goal which was not only successful but was the winning points for the home team, the final score Coventry Bears 43-42 West Wales Raiders.

Even though it was a disappointing end to the game we all agreed that the performance from the squad was a massive difference from the week before, as we are still missing a lot of first team players this performance was great for all us staff to see as when we have all players back and available its going to be tough to select a squad each Saturday.

On Sunday it was time to take a trip to Builth Wells for myself and Jon Ellis as we prepared for a day with the future of Wales Rugby League.

Once we arrived we had set up a small class room with Wales Under 16’s Head Coach Wayne Ponting and we all discussed what we wanted from the development day, after a short discussion we all agreed that we wanted to see all the players in a game situation so that we could analyse each individual before we would decide upon our 26 man training squad.

We decided upon four 20 minute games where every single player would have the opportunity to play in a number of positions, it was great to see so many people participate as we had players from East Wales, West Wales and some travelling from their Super League clubs to try and be a part of this years Welsh Squad.

The day was a success as not only 40 players participated but there was a strong audience at the day with people from the local town also coming to see what talent was on offer.

It is now going to be a difficult situation for myself, Wayne and Andrew to try and decrease the numbers from 40 to 26, this year’s group of players who have attended our recent sessions have plenty of talent and this is why we all decided that we would create a final session at Ystrad Mynach’s Sporting Excellence faculties to look at some areas a little further before we finalise this year’s training squad. On this final day we have also linked up with Coleg Cymoedd for tutor Mark Jones to explain the further opportunities they can have with rugby league in Wales.

This weekend not one of our sides have a fixture so its time for all to recuperate and prepare for a very busy month of May.

I would like to also congratulate my individual club Sponsor Bodyaid Wales as the owner Dominic Reynolds completed the London Marothon last Sunday, well done from us all.