Watch: Welsh teenage wizard scores magical wonder try
When Aberavon youngster Rhodri Lewis receives the ball on the halfway line in the Welsh Premiership clash with Swansea, the one thing you’re probably not expecting is what happens next.
Exhibiting a turn of pace that Usain Bolt would pleased with, the 17-year-old deploys wizardly sidestepping skills that are a rampaging amalgam of Barry John and Gareth Bale in their pomp.
He first bursts past several opposition players then magically sidesteps two more with the sorts of dazzling footwork more used to Strictly, before sprinting to the line where he finishes this show of stunning rugby trickery off beautifully with a dive over the line.
Y traed, y cyflymder, y pwynt bonws! Cais ANHYGOEL i Rhodri Lewis yn selio’r pwynt bonws i Aberafan! 🏉
This is one of the best tries you’ll watch this season! 😍
▶️ RYGBI BYW | LIVE RUGBY@WelshRugbyUnion @AberavonRFC @swansearfc @ospreys @IndigoGroupPrem pic.twitter.com/LyRGS2VouE
— S4C Chwaraeon 🏴 (@S4Cchwaraeon) December 9, 2021
Spare a thought for the Swansea players who fail to stop Lewis – they’re no doubt still dizzy from the experience of being turned inside out and sat on their backsides.
The match, the curtain raiser of the Welsh Premiership season, played at Aberavon’s Talbot Athletic Ground ended 28-13 to the home side.
Understandably, the game will live long in the memory for Lewis’ sublime try.
The Ospreys academy product, who is Aberavon’s youngest player in the professional era – making his debut for the Wizards against Swansea, aged 17 years and two months, in the Premiership Cup back in November, is certainly one to watch.
Especially if he continues to score wonder tries like that.
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Rhodri Lewis is one to watch for the future I thnk. He had the effortless glide of Barry John and the speed & sidestep of Shane Williams.
As an Ospreys academy player he has some serious competition if he is to break through. Bridgend have Harri Morgan at 9 against Newport today with Harvey Nash as bench scrum half and both have had senior Ospreys caps already.
I would like to see Rhodri do 80 minutes and against players he did not know really well. The entire Swansea back three were O’s academy boys as well.
Hopefully, he can break into Ospreys first team with this performance, if not, get opportunity with another region to develope further. He looks really promising. But what we can Ill afford are players leaving Wales with all that entails.
Breathtaking skills 👏 Rhodri looks like an excellent prospect. Lets hope he’s fast tracked into the ospreys first team squad, and maybe even considered for the wales squad before too long (lord knows the current Wales team needs some of that traditional welsh flair). As for people worried about his age well what the late great matt busby said holds true for any sport “if a player’s good enough he’s old enough”
Great to have this on Nation.Cymru let’s have some coverage of some minor sports as well Netball Hockey Badminton etc etc ( And the women as well!)
Long live Club Rugby in Wales, the clubs are often the heart of the community!! Regional Rugby has failed in the sense that people are simply not interested in them and they have failed to build that affinity that Sports Clubs need!
For example, Aberafan are inside the Neath-Swansea Ospreys region…BUT….very few people from Aberafan/Port Talbot support them. Half the people here absolutely hate the N-S Ospreys and want them to lose every game, and the other half have no interest in them whatssoever!!
No question rugby is a community game in Wales – fail to support the clubs in Wales and there wont be the talent to go on to play for the regions and Wales. And having grown up watching some titanic encounters between the likes of swansea, neath and llanelli while i would love to see the game in Wales revert to being club based rather than regionally based i fear this would simply not be economically viable in the professional age.
I lost all interest in Welsh rugby after the advent of the sham ‘regions’.
The economic damage done to towns like Neath, Pontypridd, Pontypool etc.by Moffett was worse than anything Thatcher did.
Yes the virtual abandonement of great historic clubs like neath and pontypool by the wru was shameful…then theres the matter of the ‘culling’ of the celtic warriors….and the matter of the scarlets and cardiff blues being regions in name only