REMEMBERED: WHEN THE NEARLY MEN FINALLY LIFTED SILVERWARE
IT’S the 25th anniversary this month of one of the truly great Welsh Cup finals. It was the day Pontypridd finally ditched their “nearly men” tag as they came from behind to beat Neath 29-22 at the old National Ground in Cardiff.
Dennis John’s team trailed 22-9 five minutes into the second-half, with scrum-half Patrick Horgan having crossed twice for the Welsh All Blacks in front of a 53,000 sell-out crowd.
But a sniping touchdown from John’s son Paul turned the tide and Ponty went on to win the cup for the first time in their history thanks to a brace of tries from wing Geraint Lewis.
Neath coach Lyn Jones had his own typically unique way of summing things up after the match, saying “The devil vomited on our laps”, admitting he had been “tying the ribbons around the cup” at 22-9, while his skipper Gareth Llewellyn described it as “one easy lesson in how to throw a game away”.
The cup was raised by Ponty’s 39-year-old captain Nigel ‘Baz’ Bezani, who declared: “Everyone was on about Neath’s young players, but it was us old dogs who delivered.”
Now, quarter of a century on, here are the memories of some of the men involved in that epic encounter.
NEIL JENKINS (PONTYPRIDD FLYHALF)
“We had worked hard for a period of time and been there or thereabouts.
“We had been second or third in the league and lost in a couple of semis and a final. We had never quite got over the line and won that elusive trophy.
“We were gutted when we lost to Swansea in the final the year before.
“I missed a few kicks that day and I was pretty down about it.
“I said to Dennis John (coach) after the game, ‘We will be back next year and we will win this mate, I’m telling you straight’ and we did.”
PHIL JOHN (PONTYPRIDD HOOKER)
“The year before, we had a piper taking us to the ground, this and that. We overbuilt it.
“With the Neath game, we didn’t go down the night before, we just took it as a normal Saturday and we went on to have a famous victory.”
MATTHEW LLOYD (PONTYPRIDD FLANKER)
“We really pushed the boat out for the 1995 final against Swansea. It was the first time the club had been there since 1979.
“They kept us in town the night before and Eddie Jones (team manager) commissioned someone on the old bagpipes to take us into the stadium as we walked through the streets to go to the game. That was an experience.
“But the memories of that game are that we got beat out of sight, to be fair.
“About a month before, we had been invited over to Northern Transvaal for a match to open up the floodlights at Loftus Versfeld.
“It wasn’t any type of a friendly and a few things went on. I got involved in a bit of a kerfuffle on the pitch and broke my hand.
“So I ended up playing the final with a broken hand all strapped up. I didn’t last too long. I think I got taken off just after half-time.
“I always remember me and Jenks seething in the changing room afterwards.
“But, looking back, the whole experience stood us in good stead for the following year against
Neath, where we kept it as normal as we could. We kept it, in fact, like a normal game.”
GERAINT LEWIS (PONTYPRIDD WINGER)
“Up until that point, the Welsh Cup hadn’t held great memories for me.
“I had played at fly-half for Cardiff the day they lost to St Peter’s in 1993.
“Then, the following year, they got to the final against Llanelli and I didn’t make the team.
“I left then to go to Ponty and I didn’t make the match-day squad when they played Swansea in the final.
“So, it was sort of fourth time lucky for me really in 1996.
“I managed to grab a place through the season and get a bit of form in.
“After the experiences I’d had previously in the cup, it was nice to have a really special day in that final. It did make it a little bit sweeter, I’ve got to say.”
DALE MCINTOSH (PONTYPRIDD NO.8)
“I grew up not really understanding how important the Welsh Cup was.
“But then as I played season by season, I started to understand how hard it was to win and it became the main competition we were chasing.
“There was a lot of time when we were so close yet so far.
“We played it for our fans. I don’t think there were many left in Pontypridd on the day of the final.”
GARETH LLEWELLYN (NEATH CAPTAIN)
“It was the biggest day in the club calendar and there was a tremendous respect and rivalry between the two sides.
“We had some fantastic matches against Ponty. Both teams really went at it when we got on the pitch.”
“Our support was absolutely phenomenal. I think everybody from Ponty and the valleys must have gone down.”
PATRICK HORGAN (NEATH SCRUM-HALF)
“That final was a fantastic affair. “We went 13 or 14 points up. My main recollection was the Chief giving me a try-scoring pass which I intercepted and I outpegged Neil Jenkins to the corner. I have fond memories of that.
“I scored two tries that day and I remember thinking ‘I’m up for Man of the Match here’, but it wasn’t to be.”
MAN-OF-THE-MATCH PAUL JOHN (PONTYPRIDD SCRUM-HALF)
“It was nice to get a try. It was from about three metres I think.
“We were pressing all the time and from there on we were just in the ascendancy. “It was a great game to play in.”
NIGEL BEZANI (PONTYPRIDD CAPTAIN)
“I thought we were more relaxed going out than we were the year before, when we were very tense.
“We were more laid back and that had a lot to do with it.
“When we got behind, we knew we could dig our way out of it.”
DENNIS JOHN ( PONTYPRIDD COACH)
“Even when we were 13 points down, I knew we would come back because Neath had profited not so much from their own play as our mistakes.
“We sometimes played risk football because we had belief in ourselves that we were always capable of scoring.”
GERAINT LEWIS
“Both of my tries came very late on and they both came within a few minutes of each other.
“I was just very fortunate to be on the end of two lovely pieces of skill really. That just happened to be the direction of play at the time.
“The first one was a bit of a planned move which came off, with some great work from Crispin Cormack coming in at full-back and feeding Dai Manley, who drew the last man and put me away to run it in.
“Then the second one was a great bit of vision and skill from Steele Lewis with a perfectly weighted little grubber kick.
“I was just overjoyed to be so fortunate to get a brace of tries in a game of such magnitude.”
MATTHEW LLOYD
“Even when we were 22-9 down, we still had the belief to turn it around. Baz would always have some choice words to pick us up.
“After Paul scored his try to bring us back into it, we just had the momentum to carry us through.
“I remember towards the end of the game, we went 24-22 up and I said to Jenks ‘We have got this’ and he nearly punched me!
“He said ‘No we haven’t, keep going, keep going’. You know what Jenks is like, he’s like a little rottweiler.
“We managed to keep it going, to keep the intensity and the focus, and it was fantastic win.
“It’s up there as a real high for me. I’ve got some tremendous memories of lifting Baz at the end.”
PAUL JOHN
“You only had to look at the scenes after the final whistle and when the boys were lifting the cup, with the pitch virtually full of our supporters.
“We had been so close and people had always talked about us being the ‘nearly men’ and not actually going the full way.
“So for that group of players to finally get over that hurdle was special for the club, the supporters and everybody involved.
“It was a great occasion and something we won’t forget.”
NEIL JENKINS
“Neath were an exceptional team and that cup final victory over them was probably the highlight of my Ponty career.
“It was an incredible day. It’s obviously a great honour to play for your country, but your bread and butter is your week-in, week-out, the people you play with and work hard with.
“To win that trophy with them was pretty special. It was a fantastic day and something I will always remember.”
PHIL JOHN
“When we went up to get the cup, you looked down and you will never see sights like that again for a club match.
“The pitch was choc-a-bloc and they were singing and chanting.
“I’m getting goosepimples now thinking about it.
“We had to do the dignitary work, but we couldn’t wait to get back to the supporters. They were our friends. We had a connection with them and it was so important.”
MATTHEW LLOYD
“When we were presented with the trophy, we were beckoning Dennis (John) and Lynn (Howells) to come up and accept it with us.
“But they were down at the bottom in among all the supporters and that’s how we were.
“We went back that night and spent the night with the fans at the club and had a fantastic time...for the next two or three days to be honest!”
NIGEL ‘BAZ’ BEZANI
“It was my last season with Ponty and what a way to go out. It was fantastic. My daughter Lucy was our mascot on the day and to win the first trophy in the club’s history was phenomenal.
“There was a lot of emotion. The best moment was picking the cup up really and seeing the whole field covered in black and white. I was just really proud that day.
“We went back to the club to celebrate with our fans and I must have shaken about 3,000 hands that night.”
GERAINT LEWIS
“There was a feeling at the club that we were due to win something at some point and once that monkey was off the back, with that first trophy, it would lead to other successes, which it did with the league the following year. They were great times.”
MATCH STATS
PONTYPRIDD 29, NEATH 22 (NATIONAL GROUND, CARDIFF, MAY 1996)
PONTYPRIDD: Tries - Paul John, G Lewis (2); con - N Jenkins; pens - N Jenkins (3); drop goal - N Jenkins PONTYPRIDD: Crispin Cormack; David Manley, Jason Lewis, Steele
Lewis, Geraint Lewis; Neil Jenkins, Paul John; Nigel Bezani (capt), Phil John, Neil Eynon, Greg Prosser,
Mark Rowley, Matthew Lloyd, Dale McIntosh (rep, Mark Spiller), Richie Collins.
NEATH: Tries - L Davies, R Jones, P Horgan (2); con - P Horgan
NEATH: Richard Jones; Chris Higgs, Leigh Davies, John Funnell, Geraint Evans; Paul Williams (rep, Huw Woodland), Patrick Horgan; Darren Morris, Barry Williams, John Davies, Glyn Llewellyn, Gareth Llewellyn (capt), Robin Jones, Steve Williams, Ian Boobyer.
REFEREE: Derek Bevan (Clydach)