WINNING START FOR PONTY IN THE CUP
A winning start for Pontypridd in cup
EBBW VALE ................. 17 PONTYPRIDD .............. 31
PONTYPRIDD dominated the first 15 minutes of possession and when home wing Kier Hughes was sin-binned for taking out Joe Davies in the air, the visitors took advantage as outside half Lewis K Williams crossed under the posts and converted his own score.
An Owen Sheppeard try soon followed after some excellent passing from the away team with Williams again converting.
Ponty continued to have plenty of possession but despite Ebbw Vale dropping off tackles late in the half the Valley Commandos could not convert pressure into points and went in at the interval 0-14 ahead.
An excellent break by centre Bradley Coombes at the start of the second half gave Ponty field position and set the platform to score another try as lock Sean Moore crossed out wide with Williams again converting.
A good push at the scrum on Ebbw’s feed saw Sheppeard bag his second try of the evening as he picked up and drove over, the score improved by Williams’ conversion.
The home side finally battled back into contention and got on the score sheet when wing Kier Hughes crossed in the corner.
Ebbw followed up with another try credited to replacement prop Ross Jones and converted by Dan Haymond.
With the Steelmen looking strong Williams opted to kick a penalty between the posts to increase Pon- ty’s lead to 12-31 with an hour played.
The game became scrappy as both sides made numerous changes off the bench but the home team finishing strongly, scoring the final try of the night courtesy of substitute Jonathan Bowen.
A creditable perfor- mance by Pontypridd in which a number of new players contributed well and saw them run out as comfortable winners 1731.