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Ton Pentre 2 - 3 Monmouth Town
Pre-Season Friendly
Saturday 26th July 2008
The Rhondda Bulldogs were defeated at Ynys Park in their second match of the pre-season by Gwent club Monmouth Town.
Ton’s visitors were promoted to Welsh League Division Three for the 2007/08 season from the Gwent County Senior League and the club, who are nicknamed the Kingfishers, can be proud of their performance.
Ton Pentre were without several key players for this friendly match with Andrew Hughes, Mark Crutch, Scott Hayward and Alyn Jones amongst those missing from the team due to different reasons. As a result striker Andrew Pearson was forced to play in defence for this match.
Despite this Ton Pentre started well and came close to scoring after 11 minutes when Jacob Daly’s pace up the left saw him gain possession of the ball and cross into the penalty area where Jamal Roberts, who spent last season with Taffs Well, was in place to head a shot towards goal. Unfortunately for the midfielder he directed the ball just over the crossbar.
Roberts was involved again ten minutes later when his sweet pass out to Phil Clarke on the wing allowed his team mate to strike at goal. Monmouth’s goalkeeper was alert to the effort and pulled off a lovely diving save palming the ball around the post.
The half hour signalled the start of a three goal frenzy within the space of two minutes as Monmouth first took the lead through Sam Palmer whose wonderful strike from outside the box finished up in the top left hand corner of Keiron Blackburn’s goal.
The Bulldogs responded with an equaliser from Chris Jones following a goalkeeping blunder that saw the Ton striker snatch possession from keeper Williams.
Action returned to the Ton end of the pitch and Monmouth regained the lead when a failed clearance attempt landed at Allerdice’s feet inside the box. He drilled his shot low and hard to make it 2-1 after 32 minutes.
Monmouth took the lead into half time but it didn’t last long after the teams had returned to the pitch.
A cross from the right into the Monmouth box found ex-Ento Aberaman striker Richard Jago who connected with the ball via a superb header that he directed inside the far post on 53 minutes.
From here it looked like Ton were the most likely team to go on and win the match, but to their credit Monmouth failed to give in and got their reward in the 77th minute when from a freekick Allerdice headed the ball into the net to restore the visitors lead.
In the final minute of the match Ton’s Jamal Roberts headed the ball into the goal but what he thought was an equaliser was ruled out by the Referee who had judged that the player had pushed his marker in the back to gain an advantage.
Therefore, Monmouth left the Ynys Park with a superb pre-season win under their belts. The Kingfishers should use such a result as inspiration for their forthcoming Division Three campaign.
Match report © Ton Pentre AFC Press
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