Scarlets climb into sixth spot

Jones turned down the Barbarians to make his 300th Scarlets appearance

Stephen Jones celebrated his 300th appearance for the Scarlets by bagging 17 points in his side's 22-12 victory over Newport Gwent Dragons on Friday.

Jones booted six out of six at Parc y Scarlets and prop Rhys Thomas crossed for a try to boost their side up to sixth place in the RaboDirect Pro12 table.

Both sides went into the match stripped of a raft of internationals, Scarlets missing seven players and Dragons five, who are preparing to face Australia at the Millennium Stadium.

The Dragons had the better of the first half but went into the break trailing by 10 points after Thomas crossed in the final minute of the opening period.

The prop crashed over after replacement centre Viliame Iongi had followed up a cross-field kick from Stephen Jones.

Jones and Jason Tovey swapped penalties in the opening five minutes after both openside flankers Gavin Thomas and Johnathan Edwards committed offences at rucks.

Scrappy

The Dragons made the better early chances and it took a good tackle by Gareth Maule to stop wing Aled Brew going in at the left corner.

But, despite the visitors often looking the more dangerous side, it was Jones who put the Scarlets six points into the lead with penalties on 18 and 31 minutes

Tovey pulled three back with a penalty and should have had a chance to draw the scores level soon after

But the Dragons opted to kick for the corner only to see the Scarlets go up the other end to score the only try of the half.

Tovey kicked his third penalty to reduce the deficit to seven points at the start of a scrappy second half.

But Jones cancelled that out 12 minutes from time after the Dragons back-rower was sin-binned for slowing up ball at a ruck in front of his own posts.

Dragons replacement fly-half Steffan Jones and the Scarlets stand-off swapped penalties in the space of three minutes as neither side looked like scoring a try in the second half.

And the Dragons were denied a losing bonus point when Steffan Jones missed a drop goal attempt in the last minute.