The home side, beaten heavily in their opening three fixtures against reigning champions the Ospreys (66-5), Dragons (59-12) and the Scarlets (74-0), provided their visitors with a stern test and made them work very hard for their first win of the new campaign,
Blues North drew 24-24 with Blues South in their opening game, were then pipped 25-24 by a last gasp penalty against Dragons and went into the game on the back of a 37-24 home defeat to the Ospreys. They had to weather an early storm in Colwyn Bay before eventually taking the lead with a 24th minute try from lock Mitchell Barnard.
Outside half Rhys Davies added the extras, but five minutes later the home side were on level terms thanks to a try by scrum half Henry Maitland-Davies which full back Sam Earl-Jones converted. That put the north Walians back in the fight, but they were unable to add to their score after that.
Instead it was the visitors who took control with lock Cian Lewis-Hughes crashing over for the try that regained the lead. Davies again slotted the conversion and then added a penalty before the final two tries went in to make victory safe.
There are two more games on Wednesday, 6 September, to complete the first phase of the competition. The Dragons will hope to make it a double over arch-rivals the Blues when they host Blues South at Ystrad Mynach (kick-off 7.15pm), while there will be a west Wales derby at Parc y Scarlets (kick-off 7.15pm) when the two unbeaten teams, Scarlets and Ospreys, go head to head.
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