James Buckland was pleased with London Welsh's pre-season game

London Welsh head coach James Buckland expressed satisfaction over his team's pre-season opening game against the Merthyr RFC at The Wern Sports Park.

Buckland’s men ran a five-try riot with three of it coming in the second half as the visitors outplayed Merthyr with a scoreline of 31-7. The first try came as early as in the eighth minute when Koree Britton scoring it and was converted by Glyn Hughes to take a 7-0 lead for the Welsh side.

However, the score was levelled when Andy Powell scored the opening try for the home side with Matthew Jarvis adding the extras. Just at the stroke of the half-time, Kieran Murphy provided the much needed respite for the London Welsh with the second try which saw them going into the second half with a 14-7 lead.

The second half proved to be much better for the Welsh side with Chris Elder touching down twice while Nathan Morris racked up a try as well to ensure a 31-7 finish.

“The first pre-season game can always be a little bit awkward, but the boys navigated it quite well,” said Buckland.

“Our control and organisation were the most pleasing aspects. The scoreline was also very pleasing; pre-season or otherwise you want to score plenty of points and not concede. We did concede a soft try but I felt the guys controlled the majority of the game.

“Merthyr were very competitive but the guys managed to put some structures together and we were pretty organised. Defensively we also had a pretty good work out as Merthyr were playing from everywhere.

“Our set-piece wasn’t perfect in the first half, but we got it working in the second and we played some pretty good stuff at times.”

The game also saw London Welsh fielding two separate XV's in both the half and Buckland reasoned that he wanted as many players to get a chance in the match.

“Today we got 28 guys on the pitch and they all had a really good solid workout. We didn’t go out to make changes; 15 started the first half and a different 15 started the second. Josh Hodson got a bump on the shoulder and James Lewis a bang on the head, but everyone else came through it and shaped up pretty well,” said Buckland.

“The only area we probably fell down on a little bit was in broken field, and the energy of the guys to stay in the game. But it was the first run out of the season and that’s now the benchmark.

“It’s now about next week and trying to get better. We’ve got Ebbw Vale in two weeks and we’ll try and get as much out of that game as we can to give ourselves the best preparation for Rotherham.”

London Welsh now face Ebbw Vale at Imber Court on 27th August in their next game.