Behind the scenes with West Wales Raiders Manager Peter Tiffin

The previous weekend began with a visit at a Communities First project in which we were asked if we could put on a beginners rugby league workshop for all the local children during a family fun day. We do enjoy working closely with Communities First as each event we partner with them we thoroughly enjoy, with each individual who takes part in our workshop may not have heard about the raiders or even rugby league but by the end of each event every individual explains to us how much they enjoy the time spent with ourselves and how can they participate or be involved more with the sport. It was a great day and a lot of work was put in behind the scenes by all the public in the local community of Llwynhendy.

Last Saturday we welcomed Coventry Bears to our home ground of Stebonheath Park, each time we have played the Bears it has been a close and physical encounter. With Coventry being the only team to beat us at our home ground last season everyone knew they were in for a very tough game.
Coventry travelled to Stebonheath with a strong squad including 6 first team players ex Queensland Cowboys Pivot and current Welsh International James Geutjiens.
The first half was a tale of two 20 minutes as both sides scored equal amounts making the half time score West Wales Raiders 22-22 Coventry Bears.

The second half started exactly as the first with Coventry coming out much quicker and scoring 20 unanswered points, two serious injuries to the raiders made things a lot worse as the score was Raiders 22-44 Coventry.
With 15 minutes remaining the Raiders decided to turn on the style to claw back the scores to 34-44 to Coventry, another opportunity which we took brought the score even closer as it went 40-44 to Coventry. We then set up to ready to go again but with a knock on from the kick off on our own try line everyone’s heads dropped and Coventry capitalised by ending the game with 6 more points and leaving the score West Wales Raiders 40-50. After the game we all discussed how we needed to improve in certain areas and everyone agreed that we would work on our weaknesses in depth in training this week.

On Sunday myself, Andrew Thorne, Jon Ellis and Wayne Ponting all travelled to Wrexham for the first fixture of the Welsh Select under 16s programme, with so many players involved with both the welsh select and North Wales we all decided it would be a great opportunity to play 4 20 minute games so that we could take a look at both teams, this was later on proved to be a good call as we all viewed both sets of squads and looked at all the players in different positions, it was great to also invite 3 North Wales players in to the welsh select squad as they highly impressed on the day, we would all like to thank Allen Jones and his team for hosting us for the day and his players have developed with some great talent on show. 

This weekend it was decided that we wanted to have a double header of rugby league at Stebonheath Park, First up our reserve side will take on last year’s champions the Bridgend Blue Bulls in the Welsh Conference league with a kick of time of 12:00, this is followed by what was definitely the most aggressive game of last season as the Raiders first team welcome Torfaen Tigers back to stebonheath park for a conference league south fixture. 

Andrew Thorne director of the raiders commented 

 “This is sure to be a great day showcasing the rugby league talent that the community has to offer, and what a place to host it, Stebonheath is fast becoming a known location for rugby league in Wales and I’m sure all the players will give it their all at this fantastic venue.”

The day will begin with the gates opening at 10:30 and prices are £5 for adults and £3 for children.