Behind the scenes with West Wales Raiders Manager Peter Tiffin

With the season now in full flow for both first team and the reserves its currently a very busy time for the club, last Thursday a select few of our players help take part in a mixed charity netball tournament at Llanelli Leisure centre, we always like to make sure that we help as many events in the local community and in our eyes we think this one was a great success as both halls in the leisure centre were full from 6-9.

The next event that we had to prepare for was our first home game of the season, this day would consist of our junior under 15s players taking part in a mini trial game amongst themselves before our first team took on London Chargers, this year we are looking at having a junior game before every first team home game this season, we decided upon this idea as it gives the junior players a view of what it is like to play at stebonheath park. On Saturday over 24 children took part in the trial for the under 15s, this is great for us as we have entered them in this year’s junior welsh conference, majority of the children stayed to view the first team in action and this week’s opponents were London Chargers, London had previously beaten Coventry Bears 80-0 and hadn’t lost home and away for over 2 years so we all realised what a difficult fixture this would be.

The game began in a frantic fashion with both sets of teams scoring some well worked tries and the possession moving back and forth throughout the first half, London edged it as both teams went in on the half 22-18. The second half talk from the London coach must have been inspirational as they came into the second half showing great attacking flair and proving a handful, the Londoners moved ahead with a 10 point gap after 50 minutes of play, this seemed to then spark our players in to action as the play was back and forth with both sets of teams scoring some great tries, the game kept the crowd well entertained all the way to the end as the scores were 36-34 to London with only seconds remaining captain Nathan Beck decided to put up a massive kick in which an array of players chased, as it came down it was a tussle between London’s winger and our very own Morgan Jefferies in the air as the later came out on top to win the ball and just drop to score the winning try, the crowd were in great voice to cheer the home team to victory.

It was a great showpiece for the 120 crowd to view and head coach Jon Ellis expressed his joy in explaining “what an unbelievable game that was, it was none stop for eighty minutes and our players showed some great tenacity and a never say die attitude west Wales is renowned for, a great spectacle for rugby league and it will be good to see our fan base grow and grow.
London Chargers are a class act, a great set of blokes, Raiders play an attractive free flowing style of rugby league great to watch so get down to Stebo and watch us.”

This week began again with some more news as our home ground will showcase this year’s world cup qualifier between Wales and Serbia on October 15^th, and the tickets are now finally on sale, we are very excited for this fixture and hope to show that west Wales has an amazing support for their country, if you would like to purchase your tickets please follow the link below – https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/walesrugbyleagueevents

If you would like any more information regarding the world cup qualifier please contact myself and Andrew Thorne on 07772949956.

This weekend we travel to Devon and Blaenau Gwent for first and reserve team fixtures, this will be the first time the raiders will face both sets of teams as Devon will be a home and away fixture for an annually shield and Blaenau Gwent will be round 2 for the reserves in the welsh conference.