CHAMPIONS SCHOOLS YEAR 8 NATIONAL FINAL
ST JOSEPH’S (NEWPORT) 38 - 28 TEMPLE MOOR (LEEDS)
St Joseph’s RC School from Newport wrote a piece of Welsh history on Friday afternoon after beating the more experienced Temple Moor School from Leeds 38-28 to become National Year 8 Rugby League Champions. It’s the first time that a Welsh school has won any national Champions Schools Rugby League competition in six years and while the last school to do so, Brynteg of Bridgend, made stars of Rhys and Ben Evans, St Joseph’s have their own twins in Rollin and Elvis Menayese who scored all the St Joseph’s points between them. Rollin led the way and rightly won man of the match with his five tries and five conversions while Elvis chipped in with a brace of touchdowns of his own.
The overwhelmed Rollin was delighted at his 30-point haul, saying: “It feels amazing; it’s the best feeling in the world. It was worth all of those games in the wet and cold to come and play at a stadium like this. It’s the first time I’ve ever played at a proper ground. It was a great atmosphere. It was good to even get this far but to win the game is amazing. I hope we can do it all again next year but there’s a lot of hard work that we need to put in before then.”
There was just one minute gone in the first of the two 25 minute halves, and St Josephs took the lead when from a scrum, Rollin broke through to run under the sticks before converting himself. His brother Elvis looked to have broke through for a second straight away but the referee pulled him back after being judged to have stepped in touch. But the Newport lads gave away the ball from a scrum following an infringement and Temple Moor fought back, Harvey Hallas scoring after a good set of six. Jonny Hynes converted. And the English took the lead four minutes later when Luke Barraclough broke through from short range. Hynes kicked well to make the score 12-6. St Joseph’s levelled on 15 minutes when Rollin Menayese picked up a loose ball and ran 60 metres to ground and goaling again. Two more Temple Moor scores made it 24-12 at halftime.
St Joseph’s fight back started when Rollin Menayese stole the ball and ran unchallenged under the sticks for his hat-trick, converting again. From the restart, Elvis Menayese ran 80 metres for another try back. With eight minutes remaining on the clock, St Joseph’s levelled, once again through wonder-kid Rollin, running through the tiring Leeds defence beating everyone to score under the posts and converting. With three minutes remaining, Rollin Menayese dived over from dummy half for his fifth try and converted again.
“It was a tough win,” said St Joseph’s coach Stefan Sankala, who has turned out for Cardiff Demons and Wales Students in his playing career. “It crept away from us at the end of the first half when we were three tries down but to be fair, we kept plugging away and managed to get a couple of tries to get back into it. I’m really proud of all of the lads today who did their bit not just for St Joseph’s and Newport but for Wales.”