Pontllanfraith travelled up the valley for a floodlight friendly against Rhymney for a rematch of this season Swalec Bowl clash in which Rhymney won 16-3. However, this fixture resembled more of a barbarian experience with both team using a few players from other teams to help field teams.
Pont got off to a great start, after collected the kick off and driving forward a few phases, the two centres combined on the half way line to run in Pont's 1st try under the posts. Pontllanfraith dominated the majority of the first half behind a strong scrum and lineout but were unable to turn territory and pressure into points. First Mark Counsell wasted a good overlap opportunity and then later in the half winger Mike Wake didn't quite have the pace to score in the corner after a terrific break from Tom Haddock.
Pont were forced to use their only substitute at half time which forced the scrums to go passive, which was a shame as it was an area of real strength in the first half. With the passive scrums and fresh legs, Rhymney got back in the game and began to boss territory and possession and poor tackling allowed them to score two tries to take the lead, fortunately the Rhymney kicker missed one of the conversions from under the posts to leave Pont trailing 12-7 with 20 minutes to go.
With the lead, Rhymney then turned their attention to hurting former player Adrian Greening at ever opportunity with punches, kickes and stamps going into the Pont second rower at every opportunity. Eventually the ref spotted an incident when he yellow carded a player for the latest of late tackles.
From the resulting penatly kick to touch, the 4 man lineout got the ball to scrum half Matthew Davis and a lovely dummy saw he scamper down the blindside before offloading to captain Nathan Meyrick who sidestepped the fullback to score. The conversion saw Pont take a 14-12 lead which they held onto until the end.
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