With the morning’s blanket of fog having turned into a sunny afternoon, a good crowd, reinforced by their very vociferous visiting supporters, were entertained to a very competitive Division 1 Cup Game on the Sports Ground last Saturday.

Slow to get into their stride Rhydyfelin found themselves 3-0 down in the first minute following obstruction in a kick-chase and a further three points penalty for offside inside 8 minutes.

This galvanised the visitors into making their first incursion into the home 22m area courtesy of a long grubber kick and although the ball crossed the line, play was called back for an entry from the side penalty on the 22. But the threat from the corner line-out eased when the ball went loose and Monmouth were able to put in a long touch clearance.

Hooker Christopher next found himself in a backs move and helped by some decoy running he passed inside to centre Dunmore who went over for the first of what was to be a five try game. Full back Erasmus continued to convert neatly.

A 13 point lead after 17 minutes looked encouraging and perhaps explained the overconfidence that was to follow. The visitors forced their way back and instead of clearing their line by kicking, for some reason Monmouth tried to play rugby near it and a challenging high pass to Scriven on the right wing placed him in all sorts of trouble. A penalty for holding on brought a penalty touch in the left corner resulting in a battering of the home line where fly half Bates earned a yellow card for killing the ball and a penalty try to boot.

Young wing Scriven soon redeemed himself fielding a deep kick and initiating a move into the visitors’ left corner only for the move to be thwarted by a deliberate knock on which brought them a yellow card.

Rhydyfelin responded well breaking at pace and almost ankle tapped, found a supporting player who scored untouched. The failed kick narrowed the score to 13-12.

A line out, turnover at a ruck and a scrum, next led to a move by the home team. Wing Scriven reached high for a pass and despite being almost cut in half by a tackle found centre Jeffs on his inside who added 5 points for what was to be the 18-12 score at the break.

The interval obviously helped the visitors focus the better because a knock on from the kick off conceded possession and a succession of missed tackles saw the lead quickly reversed to 18-19 which Monmouth, despite their endeavours, were never to regain not helped by a yellow card award for trying to slow down a ruck clearance and a further three points from the penalty.

Rhydyfelin were now taking the lead at the line-out and other errors were creeping into Monmouth’s game as they became more anxious. A knock-on in a tackle brought a scrum and with the aid of an apparently unnoticed forward pass the visitors moved close on the left. A winning line-out and subsequent maul saw one of their players slip off the side and over to stretch the lead to 18-27 but worse than that something had happened following the line-out which was not clear but saw two red cards following it and soon two further line-out steals by the visitors.

Scrums had by now gone passive but still not outdone 2nd Row Hobbs cut a nice angle near the opposing line but was stopped. A call back for a penalty maintained the pressure and despite the strong defence a quick pass saw Dunmore score again with Erasmus adding the extras to narrow the deficit to 25-27 with a quarter still to play.

The referee paused to consult his assessor following crowd confusion as to how many players were excluded from play and after the game admitted that he had erroneously awarded one of the red cards which had unfortunately left Monmouth at a one man disadvantage for a large part of the game.

On the re-start a series of missed tackles this time on their giant and speedy left wing took the visitors 25-34 ahead and despite the best endeavours of the home team, passing and discipline became ragged bringing yet another three points for a final score of 25-37. In fairness the final, score was not quite a fair representation of the closeness of the game particularly given some official errors including that by touch-judges, but, as they say, “that’s sport for you”.

With Cup opportunities now gone for another season, it is back to the League next Saturday with Bedlinog the visitors who promise to be as challenging as Rhydyfelin were.