‘Threat of relegation will be key in selection’

NEATH ................................... 7 BRIDGEND .......................... 10

BRIDGEND chief Matt Silva admits the threat of relegation hanging over clubs this season will have a massive bearing on his approach.

The Ravens edged a lowscoring game with Neath at The Gnoll where all the points were scored in the first half.

Adam O’Driscoll’s early try was converted by new recruit Will Holley, who also added a penalty.

Ben Uphill got the Neath try which was converted by Ed Howley.

In a season where a quarter of the teams in the Premiership will be relegated, one thing that has changed is that we knew from the start that we had to keep Bridgend Ravens up,” said Silva.

“It’s a great club and deserves to be in the Premiership.

“Even when we had a great run at the end of last season, I told the players it would count for nothing if we could not build on it in this most important of seasons.

“The relegation threat has definitely caused us to focus on building up consistency earlier in the season.

“For that reason, you may not see as many changes in our matchday squads in the first few weeks as in the past.”

Meanwhile, Neath head coach Simon King said: “It doesn’t matter what is happening in the league, you’ve just got to prepare a team to win a game.

“As I told the team at the end of the match, it’s September 8, not March 8.

“We’ve still got a lot of hard work to put in and a lot of improving to do.

“It was very disappointing really but, if we are honest, there were two sides there afraid of losing because of the nature of where we all are.

“Bridgend deserved to win, I can’t complain about that.

“I tell the team every week that we will get what we deserve.

“We put ourselves in positions in the second half where we needed to win those lineouts and we lost them. “We lost all three of them.” Bridgend host winless Swansea at the Brewery Field on Friday, while Neath make the trip to Cross Keys the following afternoon.