Coventry Bears 18 Valley Cougars 58
Coventry Bears failed in their bid to make the play offs losing to a strong Valley Cougars outfit at the Butts Park Arena on Saturday.
It was a disappointing end to a roller coaster season. In which they had had the highs of being the only team to defeat Minor Premiers Huddersfield Underbank Rangers and the lows of defeats to lowly Warrington and Nottingham.
A try after 5 minutes to the visitors was followed by a twenty minute period in which the Bears contested and almost managed to cross the line on a few occasions but somehow the Cougars defence held out. That period was ended by two tries to the Welsh outfit. The Bears did manage a try when centre Tim Leishman broke through to score on the left.
On the stroke of half time the Bears were hit by another try to give them a mountain to climb in the second half.
HT Bears 6 Cougars 24.
Any hopes of a fightback were quickly dashed as another long range try was scored by the Cougars. The Bears did briefly flatter to deceive and the home fans were given something to cheer hope Second row Chad Grant pounced on a pass from Leishman to give the home crowd something to cheer.
The Cougars were off loading and breaking through the Bears defence and scored 4 tries in 10 minutes to ensure they progressed into the play offs.
A bizarre try from Coventry then followed the ball was bouncing around between both attackers and defenders feet in the in goal area .Finally Bears Sub Harry Kaufman plonked the ball down, and after discussing the incident with his touch judges the referee awarded the try. It was Valley that deservedly had the last word when Prop Joe Burke ended the season for the Bears.
Head Coach Alan Robinson was disappointed after the game.
“That wasn’t the way we wanted to finish the season, but we can’t always get what we want. I will sit down with my coaching team and review the season and see what we need to do to improve. I have a couple of things in the pipeline that I’m working on to raise us up to another level next year. Stepping up to the National division was the right thing to do for the club, I could come out with all sorts of excuses about why we didnt do better but im not one for excuses thats just part of the game. There is no doubt we have gone through another learning curve and sometimes we haven’t done ourselves any favours. In regards to today Valley Cougars are the only team in Wales at this level and have the full support of the Welsh RL and a professional Rugby League club in South Wales Scorpions, its links like that that can give you the boost you need at this time of the season.
Id like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us this season, we have developed a new fan base and have our Junior pipeline starting to bear fruit, the future is bright for the club”
Coventry Team
Tom Tsang, Tawanda Chipadze, Matt Cooper, Tim Leishman, Tanaka Chamunokara, Stephen Coleman, Scott Clendenning Fenton, Mike Venn, Alex Brown, Demetrius Gonsalves, Brad Massey, Chad Grant, Rob Brown, Ken Dowding, John Nicholls, Harry Kaufman, Luke Watts,
Coventry scorers.
Tries Leishman, Grant, Kaufman. Conversions Coleman (3)
Man of the match
Brad Massey