Pontypridd v Cardiff - BIC Cup Qualifier

And so the 2014/15 season begins ...

For Ponty it begins with one of the biggest games of the season immediately. The British and Irish Cup qualifying match. We have to play our regional partners Championship team, Cardiff, for the right to play in the European competition this season.

What could have been a potential banana skin of a game was successfully negotiated with a 40-12 thumping of our local rivals.

We came out of the blocks fired up, and in less than ten minutes we had scored twice with a penalty and a converted try. Having a player sin binned curtailed our scoring for a while, but we were soon over the whitewash again.

Cardiff were just missing too many first tackles, and putting themselves under pressure.

At the start of the second half, just when you thought it was safe to relax, we got a second yellow card, to the same player, so we were down to 14 for the remaining 25 minutes. As you can imagine, Cardiff threw everything at us, but they just could not score. We had another player sin binned, so we were down to 13 for the last ten minutes ... what happened next was ridiculous really ... we went on the attack (the best form of defence!) and scored two drop goals and a try to finish the match. I've never seen the like at Sardis Road before!

I got drowned walking back to the car park in what turned out to be one of the most localised storms ever .. it was sunny when I got back to Tonyrefail!

There's 55 more photos on Flickr for you!