Pooler on the slide after draw (From Free Press Series)

Pooler on the slide after draw

PONTYPOOL served up their third draw of the season last week, missing out on the chance to put daylight between themselves and the other Welsh Premiership strugglers.

A 25-25 share of the spoils on Friday night follows draws with Bedwas and Maestag earlier in the season. The six points Pooler have lost in those three ties would have lifted them to mid-table - so tight is the situation at the bottom of the table.

But while coach David Gray would welcome the additional points he was still very pleased with the way his side had played in poor conditions at Glamorgan Wanderers.

He said: "It was blowing a nasty gale down there and we were playing into the wind first half.

"You were lucky if you could kick the ball more than ten yards, so we happy just to be 15-12 down at half time.

"If we had shown a bit more discipline it could have been closer, or we could even have been ahead. Then the second half we took the game to them; we grounded down and with ten minutes we were 25-20 up."

Pontypool's three tries came from Lee Meads, Adam Sliczny and Gavin Donaldson, with Sam Mills adding two penalties and two conversions. Gray added: "I do believe that we were unlucky not to win the game. We were camped in their 22 in the last five minutes with the scores level and we kept letting them off the hook with silly penalties.

"The referee could have given us a penalty of our own for a collapsed maul - but he's chosen not to."

Instead two yellow cards for Pooler had already cost them, Gavin Lucas picking up the first right at the end of the first half and scrum half Owen Jones being shown another after the break.

Gray added that he had no argument with either of those decisions.

Looking ahead to a tricky end of season run in, Gray refused to put a figure on the amount of points required to stay up. But he did describe this Saturday's home tie with Bedwas (kick off 2.30pm) as a "must win" game.

However, he will be without Scott Williams for the rest of the season, after he picked up an injury to his hand on Friday.

And with Dan Robinson still out with an ankle ligament problem, Gray will be forced to improvise with little cover at inside centre.