Tales of Christmases Past: The West Wales Derby

Well, I think the answer is found when we look at a local derby in any sport. No matter their positions in their respective leagues, Swansea City always want to beat Cardiff City, Rangers always want to beat Celtic, Lancashire always want to beat Yorkshire, the New York Yankees always want to beat the Mets and the Chicago Bears have been wanting to beat the Green Bay Packers above all others since they first met in 1921. It’s all about bragging rights and the closer the rivalry, the better.

The Swansea.com Stadium is separated from Parc y Scarlets by the small matter of 11 miles and the Loughor Bridge, and because the creation of these two regions also saw them sharing borders, rivalry was always going to run fiercely. But throw into the mixture, ‘Boxing Day’, and the stakes somehow get even higher.

To date, in the URC - which was known as the Celtic League when Welsh rugby went regional in 2003 - the Ospreys and the Scarlets have fought out 39 matches.

The bad news is that the Ospreys have lost 16 of those encounters, but the far more pleasing statistic for Ospreys supporters is that they’ve won 21. The other two contests being the drawn games of November 2011 and the most recent fixture, held in September this year.

That 23-23 draw, earlier this season, in particular embodied the spirit of a local derby, with Ospreys rushing into a lead thanks to great work down the left wing between Keelan Giles and Gareth Anscombe. Their clever inter-passing saw the outside half over for the first try of the game, which helped the Ospreys to a reasonably comfortable 13-6 half-time lead, only to see it turned around just after the hour as the Scarlets edged ahead, 23-16.

With the partisan home crowd willing the Scarlets on, the Ospreys dug in defensively, refusing to concede another point, until clawing their way upfield. Camped on the Scarlets line with the clock red, it was Rhys Davies who muscled his way over from a yard. But more was needed to secure the fighting draw, and up stepped debutant, Jack Walsh wearing 22 to stroke over the calmest of conversions from a tight angle wide on the right side of the pitch.

As he struck his kick, the clock showed 82:38, yet Walsh appeared utterly nerveless as the ball sailed over to rescue the draw and share the spoils. His composure under enormous pressure clearly a good omen for Christmases yet to come!

But the Ospreys faithful didn’t have to wait too long to avenge the ‘Scarlet double’, by completing their own, more emphatic brace of victories the very next season.

Firstly at Stradey again, on 10 September 2004, a rampant Ospreys kept the Scarlets to just a couple of penalties, with the 6-23 away victory being delivered by tries from Gavin Henson and Richie Pugh, with the extras coming from the superb Henson’s trusty right boot, sealing his 18 point contribution to the win. This set up the second derby contest of the season, the first ever Boxing Day treat at the Gnoll.

Played out in front of a packed Neath crowd of 10,280, the old ground was brought to fever pitch by a scintillating performance from Shane Williams. The first half had been a struggle for the Ospreys, conceding the first try to Scarlets No 8, Jonathan Mills, after their hooker, Robin McBride had burst through from a line-out. Following quickly on from the Scarlets score, some magic from Shane saw him breakthrough with a typically jinking run before feeding Ospreys captain, Barry Williams to touch down and give the home team an 11-7 lead.

A feisty second half which saw Scarlets second row, Chris Wyatt seeing yellow, turned quickly in the Ospreys favour with tries from James Bater and two from Williams - Shane not Barry - to cap off the elusive wing’s Man of the Match performance. The 28-7 victory ensured that the first ‘Black and White double’ had been secured. For the likes of Sonny Parker, Jason Spice, Duncan Jones, Brent Cockbain, Ryan Jones and the rest, their abstinence of mulled wine the day before clearly paid handsome dividends!

Scarlets fans would have to wait two years for the next Boxing Day derby, and despite having won two of the three ‘regular’ derbies that followed their Gnoll defeat of 2004, they probably wished that they’d stayed at home when December 26 2006 came around. In front of a capacity crowd of 20,520, the Ospreys - and young lad called James Hook - made it a Nightmare after Christmas for the Scarlets. Having only made his first Ospreys start in the opening game of that 2006 season, Hook’s pinpoint accuracy with the boot delivered the Ospreys 23 points and with it, Hook was awarded the Man of the Match award.

The contest was a classic game of two halves, with the Ospreys - inspired by their Kiwi imports, Justin Marshall and Filo Tiatia - winning the first, 22-10 and the second, 28-14 to deliver an emphatic 50-24 victory, which saw the home team running in 5 tries. The touchdowns were shared out between Ryan Jones, Andy Lloyd, Nikki Walker, Lyndon Bateman and Lee Byrne. The defeat was the worst ever suffered in the, then, Celtic League by the Scarlets, and despite a penalty try and consolation tries from Dwayne Peel and Gavin Evans it was a game that the Llanelli faithful would quickly choose to forget.

That crushing 50-24 Boxing Day victory proved a bit of a watershed for a rapidly developing Ospreys squad in terms of the derby, winning 7 of the next 9 contests between the two regions. Considering this was a squad now containing players of the calibre of Mike Phillips, Alun Wyn Jones, Marty Holah, Ian Gough and of course, Jerry Collins, it was no real surprise that it would all culminate in an even bigger victory than that 2006 game. This record-breaking win would take place in December 2010. Not strictly a Boxing Day fixture, as it was played on the 27th, thanks to a 24 hour postponement due to frozen pipes at the, then, Liberty Stadium. But the day’s delay didn’t hamper the Ospreys, who put their rivals to the sword like never before.

In what was a very similar tale to the 50 point victory 4 years earlier, all the Ospreys tries were shared around and a young kicker stole the show by slotting 26 points. But this time it wasn’t James Hook, it was a boy named Biggar. Despite Hook getting on the scoresheet with a first half try - along with second half scores from Tommy Bowe, Paul James, Jonathan Thomas, Richard Fussell and Jamie Nutbrown - it was Biggar’s own try, 5 penalties and 3 conversions that saw him seal Man of the Match honours. With the Ospreys leading 20 points to three at half time, the two Scarlets tries of Jonny Fa’amatuainu and Gareth Maule, did little to dent the home team’s 40 point second half haul.

Credit should also be given to both sets of supporters, who despite the disruption of the late postponement on Boxing Day, turned up in their numbers the following afternoon, with 18,151 braving the cold weather. Once again, and thanks to the record breaking 60-17 score line, it was the home fans who left the stadium filled to the brim with Christmas cheer.

The next derby would take place on another significant date, Guy Fawkes night in 2011, the November of the following season. A cliché would see me draw a comparison between on-field battles with fireworks, but a hard-fought, uncompromising struggle, meant that the only real fireworks were those in the skies around Swansea. On the field in Landore, the Scarlets fought hard and managed to halt their slide in these derby fixtures by securing the first of only two draws in the fixture.

The 9-all tie in front of a crowd of 12,332, was a night for the kickers with points being shared equally by Dan Biggar and the Scarlets’ legend, Stephen Jones. Not to reduce the importance of the points shared between each side, the evening was more notable for a significant career milestone for the 22-year-old Biggar. His 9 points saw him overtake James Hook as the Ospreys highest ever point scorer, a record he holds to this day. Despite Stephen Jones’s success with the boot on the night, he could probably count himself lucky to have not seen red following a spear tackle on Tommy Bowe, with French referee Mathieu Raynal deeming a yellow card sufficient punishment.

The match finished with the Scarlets in the ascendancy, desperately seeking the try that would’ve helped banish the memories of the previous crushing encounter, but dogged resistance from the Ospreys in defence prevented the Scarlets crossing. However, something eventually had to give from all the desperate home defending, and it did when Mr Raynal spotted the Ospreys defence stray offside allowing the excellent Jones to share the spoils with an equalising penalty. The 9-9 final score line was not the victory that the visitors craved, but was perhaps a moral one after experiencing that mauling of the previous season.

Jones and the Scarlets didn’t have to wait long, though, to see if they could improve on that drawn game. Just seven weeks after the Guy Fawkes display, both teams ran out onto a soaked Parc y Scarlets pitch for the next Boxing Day fixture, west of the Loughor Bridge. Prior to the tight draw in November, the Ospreys had won the previous six derbies, but as Mr Scrooge would himself find out, things can quickly change around Christmas, and unfortunately, they did for the Ospreys.

Led by Justin Tipuric, this was a game that the Ospreys, probably, should have won. Despite falling behind to a try from Rhys Thomas following a five-metre scrum, and the 17 points from the inspired boot of Rhys Priestland, the Ospreys almost managed to turn the game around even though they found themselves trailing by 13 points at the break. Three penalties from Dan Biggar and a try in the corner from returning Scarlets favourite, Barry Davies, had the majority of the 15,072 fans fearing the worst as the Ospreys pack containing the all-star front row of James, Hibbard and Jones, began to take hold. With the score now 16-14, and despite this forward dominance culminating in a spell camped on the Scarlets try line, the score just wouldn’t come for the visitors and two further Priestland penalties midway through the half took the game away from Tipuric’s team.

As Nigel Owens blew his final whistle, with the score at 22-14, it meant that the Ospreys, who claimed the likes of Tommy Bowe, Ashley Beck and Andrew Bishop in their line up, would return back across the bridge empty-handed. Despite this disappointment there were some playing who would have no doubt noticed the smiles of a certain young Scarlet winger as he left the field, who would - in future Christmases - feature for the region slightly more to the east of Llanelli, eventually becoming an Ospreys try scoring match-winner in the fixture some eight years later…a certain George North.

There have been eight more ‘Boxing Day’ derbies since that Yuletide defeat for the Ospreys in 2011, (I’m also including a couple played on the 27th in that number), and initially, these Christmases Past couldn’t have gone better for the Ospreys, winning the first 5 of those encounters, home and away.

The most exciting of these was no doubt the single point victory at Parc y Scarlets on Boxing Day 2015. So much happened in that 26-27 win, that I could write another article on that contest alone, but to all who witnessed it, one moment stands out. It followed a turnover by Josh Matavesi, ten metres inside his own Ospreys territory after a Scarlets’ break by Aled Thomas was snuffed out by Justin Tipuric. The ball was carried forward by Scott Baldwin, who, looking for a speedster in the space that had opened up on the left flank…found one in the unlikely form of Moldovan prop, Dmitri Arhip. For 30 glorious metres, it looked as if the man mountain was going to go the full 50 metres for the try, but instead drew Jake Ball, before effortlessly passing outside to the waiting flyer, Eli Walker, to jog in, unopposed, for the score. Dan Biggar’s conversion was the first time in the match that the Ospreys had taken the lead. And it was one they would not relinquish in the remaining 23 minutes of the game.

But in recent times, Christmas memories of the Boxing Day derby have not been so pleasing for Ospreys fans, with our neighbours in the West running out victorious in the last three played on this key festive day. And even a writer like Charles Dickens, so accomplished in describing life’s horrors via the written word, would struggle to do justice to the 44-0 mauling the Ospreys took in 2019…so I’m not going to try, either!

Suffice to say, that Toby Booth might refer to the feelings experienced by the surviving players of that humiliating defeat - Tiaan Thomas-Wheeler, Luke Morgan, Nicky Smith, Adam Beard, Bradley Davies, Justin Tipuric and Morgan Morris - as an incentive to ensure that they are never again experienced, especially on his watch!