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Saturday at the Stad de Skew, saw the first ever game between West Mon RFC and former top tier and merit table side Tredegar, in this National 3 East C league encounter .

With Tredegar coming back into the league structure last season and winning promotion at the first attempt, they are obviously looking to return to former glories but came up against a very well drilled West Mon side that are now showing the potential that was lying latent during last season.

From the start, West immediately applied pressure on their opposition forcing them into errors and although having the bigger pack the visitors found themselves under huge pressure at scrum time with the tight five of Duane ‘Dad’ Gardner, Dafydd Thomas, Jonny Coleman, Gareth Moorcraft and Captain Luke Shelton putting in huge shifts.

With West keeping it simple and playing the clever rugby orchestrated by scrumhalf Dion Perry, the first penalty soon arrived and was slotted over by fullback Morgan Parry.  This was soon increased by another penalty from Parry after a run by Jason Morgan, who was starting his first league game.

At this stage West were in total control but credit to Tredegar who finally started to exert some pressure of their own through their big number 12, although his numerous attempts to break through were well covered by centres Luke Royal and Mark Leighton who themselves were just as much of a handful in attack with their hard running.

Some ill discipline by the home side allowed Tredegar into their opponents 22 and finally score a deserved try to make the score 6-5 at halftime.

The 2^nd half saw the visitors trying to keep the momentum going that they had built at the end of the  first half, and they were rewarded when a quickly taken penalty resulted in their second try which was converted.

Tredegar kept up the pressure and another penalty goal resulted in a 6-15 lead to the visitors.

However just when Tredegar thought they had the game won, up stepped replacement Jake Wells to score a great try in the corner and it was game on again.

West now had their tails up with the back row of Daniel ‘Dukey’ Gibbings, Connor Witcombe and Richard Prosser really coming to the fore with some big runs whilst tight head Jonny Coleman had a few charges himself.

With backs and forwards interlinking well, good play by second row Gareth Moorcraft and Luke Royal resulted in the mercurial Jake Wells popping up on the opposite wing to score his second try of the game and take his tally to ten in five games.  The try was converted by Morgan Parry.

Tredegar were now unable to cope with West ‘s attacking flair or intensity and after fly half Craig Buffin released wing Alex Willcox, it took a high tackle to prevent the flying wing scoring another try. Morgan Parry kicked the resulting penalty to complete the turnaround for West.

Overall a pleasing first ever game and win against Tredegar to take West up to 3^rd in the league.

1: Duane Gardner, 2: Dafydd Thomas, 3: Jonny Coleman, 4: Luke Shelton, 5: Gareth Moorcraft, 6: Richard Prosser, 7: Daniel Gibbings, 8: Connor Witcombe, 9: Dion Perry, 10: Craig Buffin, 11: Jason Morgan, 12: Luke Royal, 13: Mark Leighton, 14: Alex Willcox, 15: Morgan Parry.

C'mon West/Dewch ymlaen Gorllewin