Glantaf look forward to another London final

Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf are back in a London rugby league final on Friday 26^th August, taking on the same opponents as last year, but it’s not at Wembley Stadium this time around.

On a memorable day at Wembley in 2015, the Cardiff-based Welsh speaking school took on and beat Wade Deacon from Widnes to lift the Year 7 Champion Schools trophy.

The score was 40-6 and after that one Widnes try, there was only going to be one winner.

Glantaf have since been featured on a variety of TV shows as their historic win was celebrated and now, with the pupils in year 8, they have still never lost a rugby league match, and coincidentally take on the same opponents, Wade Deacon in the Year 8 Final at Richmond, home of London Scottish RU (kick-off 1pm).

After storming through the Welsh rounds and winning the Welsh Final 46-12 against Ysgol Y Strade from Llanelli, they beat Hinchley Wood from London 42-12, St Bernard’s of Barrow 26-4 then Saddleworth of Oldham 50-12 in the national semi-final.

Teacher / coach Rhydian Garner says that his side are back in training on Sunday ready for the big day and that there are few changes to the squad who starred at Wembley.

“We’ve two new wingers since last year, otherwise we’ll be selecting from the same squad as last year,” he said.

“We were training up until the end of the summer term and we kick in again on Sunday after three weeks off. It’s always tough to get a full side in training during the school holidays.

“We’re taking on Wade Deacon again but I know it’ll be much tougher this year. We shocked them at Wembley and I don’t think they were expecting us to be that good, so we’ve changed our tactics to mix it up.

“Everything went right for us last year, even them scoring, as it settled us down and made us turn on the style, and we didn’t let off.

“They’ll be really concentrating on the ruck area and they’ll hit us hard, we need to combat that.

“If we get ahead, hopefully we’ll do it again. We’ve won every game in Wales by this year by a large score and had a couple of big wins on the way to this year’s final so we’ve done well. We can’t relax and we can’t go into the game thinking we’re unbeatable.

“Everyone is really looking forward to the whole weekend. We travel up on Thursday and stay two nights. Win or lose, we’ll be parading around Wembley Stadium before the Challenge Cup Final between Hull FC and Warrington Wolves but obviously we’d love it if we were there again as winners.”