Carmarthen Quins 6-3 Pontypridd

The weather conditions were inevitably going to have a huge bearing on a game which kicked off with heavy rain and gusting winds sweeping across the wide open spaces of the Carmarthen velodrome.

All of Ponty’s valiant attempts to run the ball in the early stages were scuppered by handling errors, the game being played out between both twenty-two metre lines. The visitors finally made some headway through their forceful driving play with the wind behind them.

Following a brief fracas opposing front rowers Ricky Guest of the Quins and Ponty’s Ryan Harford were both dispatched to the sin bin. Ponty were dominating territorially, working their way up to the home line but eventually settling for a Simon Humberstone penalty to open their account with twenty minutes gone.

The contest was mostly a dogfight for possession with Ponty holding the upper hand but Carmarthen able to strike back on the counter, a frustrating affair with little flow or flavour. The interval came with Ponty maintaining their narrow advantage of 0pts to 3.

A knock-on straight from the restart gave an indication that the second half would follow the pattern of the first. The Quins were now pressing hard into opposition territory with Ponty engaged in some last ditch defending duties. The weather conditions had abated somewhat but the game still failing to ignite, a scrappy encounter with the ball suffering from the ‘bar of soap’ syndrome.

Having applied significant pressure in the visitors’ half, Carmarthen were eventually rewarded as full back James Stephenson stroked over a mid-distance penalty with forty-eight minutes gone.

The game was pretty much a non event, the frustrations of the players reflected in the reactions of the crowd, and Quins lock Jon Gardiner yellow carded for infringing. Ponty were at least trying to build up some momentum but the game being a catalogue of errors, knock-ons and misplaced kicks.

The home team were holding the upper hand in the set pieces, and able to regain some field position as the game drifted into injury time. An evening which had been damp and dismal throughout ironically ended in dramatic fashion as Quins’ full back Stephenson stepped up to take a long range penalty with the last kick of the game, and hoisted the ball between the posts to seal his side’s victory by 6pts to 3.

This was a hugely disappointing return for Pontypridd, maintaining their record of failing to gain a win at Carmarthen Park and jolting their title aspirations.

Pontypridd:

15.Gareth Wyatt. 14.Lewis Williams. 13.Gavin Dacey. 12.Dafydd Lockyer (Matthew Nuthall). 11.Chris Clayton. 10.Simon Humberstone (Dean Gunter). 9.Garyn Lucas (Kristian Baller).

1.Stuart Williams. 2.Tom Hetherington. 3.Ryan Harford (Ken Knaggs). 4.Craig Locke (Owen Sheppeard). 5.Ryan Savage. 6.Darren Waters. 7.Wayne O’Connor. 8.Chris Dicomidis – cpt

Scorers: