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Ton Pentre’s winning run came to an end when a first minute penalty was enough for the visitors to take all three points at a wet Ynys Park. A great display by O’Hagan in the Croesyceiliog goal helped keep a lacklustre Rhondda Bulldogs scoreless.
The visitors opened the scoring in the 1st minute when Croesyceiliog made a break down the right, they crossed the ball into the penalty area wher Ton’s Phil Allen handled the ball and the referee awarded a penalty. Only 45 seconds had been played. Chris Watkins stepped up and slotted the ball past Marty Ellacott in the Ton goal. This proved to be the winning goal.
 2 minutes later Ton did get the ball into the net, the “goal” was ruled out for offside, this was the story of the game. Ton were caught offside more in this game than all the games played this season.
The first half saw Ton taking the game to the visitors, however there was no penetration and the Merlin Sports of Pontyprodd sponsored side were unable to break down a very well organised defence.
At half time Ton made a change when Dwayne Mardenborough replaced Kristian Orchard. Within two minutes of the restart Mardenborough was in on goal and O’Hagan pulled off the 1st of 3 great saves in the half. Ton were dominating the possession and the game without any clear chances. The Bulldogs were being caught offside continually and this was frustrating the Ton faithful. The second Ton substitute was used on the hour when Lee Mathews was replaced by Jamie Bradford. And 5 minutes later Ton used their last substitute when striker Rob Blatchford replaced centre back Allen. Ton were now playing with 4 strikers and really pushing for the equaliser/ The pressure was building on the visitors, with Ton winning a number of corners and free kicks somehow the visitors were getting ball cleared.
Mardenborough was unlucky when he had a shot cleared off the line, Croesyceiliog scrambled a couple of goal bound shots away to safety. However, the visitors were still hitting the long ball into the Ton half and they had a number of free kicks and corners, outstanding in the heart of the Ton defence was Mark Crutch, he did everything he had to do. Croesyceiliog did get one shot on goal and Marty Ellacott was equal to it.
 75 minutes in Croesyceiliog went down to 10 men when Chris Pritchard was shown his second yellow card for foul play, the visitors did not have to change their formation as they had played with 10 men behind the ball for most of the game.
O’Hagan made two superb saves in the last 15 minutes, the first from Dale Price, who struck his shot to the left O’Hagan, he got a hand to it and parried it around for a corner. Then in the dieing minutes Crutch got on the end of a ball from a Ton Corner and again fired the ball goal wards, it looked a goal all the way and the equaliser Ton probably deserved, O’Hagan had other ideas and again pulled off another wonderful save. The game ended with tom camped in the opposition half. When the referee finally blew up a delighted Croesyceiliog celebrated their hard win.
This was a game Ton needed to win to maintain their challenge at the top of the table, however it was not to be.
Next week they travel to an improving Newport YMCA 2:00pm kick off, let’s hope they can get back to winning ways!
Match report by Gary Matuszczyk
Ton Pentre: 1. Marty Ellacott; 2. Mark Crutch; 3. Kristian Orchard (Dwayne Mardenborough); 4. Scott Hayward; 5. Phill Allen (Rob Blatchford); 6. Lee Mathews (Jamie Bradford); 7. Ryan Shugar; 8. Steve Conaty; 9. Raith Plant; 10. Dale Price; 11. Alyn Jones.
Subs: 12. Rob Blatchford; 14. Jamie Bradford; 15. Dwayne Mardenborough.
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