Fixture

Abercwmboi 43 - Abercynon 5

Ever since the season’s fixture were published, this match has been looked forward to by most people in our club. Not just because it promised to be a tough local derby, but the fact that Abercynon were the first team to grant, the newly formed, Abercwmboi RFC a fixture in September 1980. (In those far off days there were no leagues, clubs arranged their own fixtures and we will always be grateful to them for doing so.)

As a result of the terrible weather this week, the Welfare ground (thanks to the drainage work that was carried out by Shapewright Services) was one of the few places where matches went ahead, and the large crowd were treated to a feast of running rugby which belied the wet conditions.

Abercwmboi started off strongly showing their intentions by running the ball from all parts of the pitch and were rewarded after only 5 minutes when returning centre Mason Williams finished off a fine team move by touching down near the posts giving scrum half Geraint Cutlan a relatively simple conversion. From the restart the home side again moved the ball, with forwards and backs showing good skills, to work outside half Jordan Rees over in the corner to bring the score to 12 – 0. After this, Abercynon seemed to wake up and only excellent defence by Abercwmboi prevented them from scoring. The home team’s instincts to run the ball at every opportunity again paid off when another move was finished off by number 8 and captain Lee Jarvis and converted by Geraint Cutlan. Although the visitors had plenty of possession they were thwarted by the defence of the home team who again attacked whenever possible. In fact, Abercwmboi spent the period before half time camped on the Abercynon and a visiting forward was yellow carded for killing the ball.

At the start of the second half, some of the Abercwmboi forwards strayed in front of the ball and from the resulting scrum Abercwmboi pushed 7-man Abercynon pack off the ball and quickly moved it out to Mason Williams for his second touch-down. The second half continued with the young Abercwmboi pack winning lots of good ball and the backs using it well to create tries for wing Lewis Morgan and forwards Sean Crawford and Adam Stacey. However, Abercynon showed much determination and were rewarded, just before the final whistle, with a try of their own to bring the final score 43 – 5.

The match sponsors (Travis Perkins) wanted to make an award to today’s man-of-the-match, but after this performance it was impossible to select one player ahead of any others.