North Wales Crusaders 24 Coventry Bears 16

Queensway Stadium, Wrexham

Comments from Head Coach Tom Tsang:

“Today was close to perfect as preparation for the start of the season. We are obviously very disappointed not to win - and I feel that we should have done exactly that - but the main thing is the performance showed us the areas where we are strong and we need to improve.”

“Crusaders are a quality team and have been tipped to be top 5 or 6 team by many , so to be winning with less than 10 minutes to go bodes well.”

“Add to that we had 4 players on debut, an average age of 20 years and 8 of our players missing due to England Universities trials, and the picture is very positive for us at the moment.”

“The spine of our team - the hooker, two halfbacks and fullback - are all new to The club but already are looking threatening with the ball.”

“But the best thing for me is that we are still only at probably under 50% of what our potential is.”

CRUSADERS

1 Danny Price
2 Gavin Conroy
3 Lloyd Roby
4 Simon Atherton
5 Rob Massam
6 Steve Roper
7 Ben Stead
8 Brad Brennan
9 Karl Ashall
21 Callum Hazzard
11 Alex Thompson
12 Stephen Wild
13 Kenny Baker
Subs:
14 Kenny Hughes
15 Sam Walters
16 Joe Connor
18 Dave Eccleston
19 Sam Freeman
20 Calum O’Neill
21 Aled Davies
22 Lewis Fairhurst

Tries: Atherton (4), Baker (18), Massam (37, 70), Roby (74)
Goals: Baker 0/1, Price 2/3
Sin-bin: Atherton (25 – dissent)

BEARS
1 Elliot Hall
2 Hayden Freeman
3 Kadeem Williams
4 Kameron Pearce-Paul
5 Dante Morley-Samuels
6 Mitchell Shaw
7 Nicholas Newman
8 Ollie Purslow
9 Nathan Conroy
10 Peter Ryan
11 Kieran Sherratt
12 Chris Barratt
13 Will Tully
Subs:
14 Niall Collett (Debut)
15 Euan Tiernan (Debut)
16 Cameron Stewart
17 Zak Fellows (Debut)
18 Jack O’Sullivan (Debut)
19 Bradley Sheridan

Tries: Hall (10), Conroy (30), Ryan (53)
Goals: Newman 2/3

Referee: Liam Staveley
HT: 14-12
Attendance: 148

Full Report from Crusaders is HERE