PENYFFORDD FC 3 – 1 OVERTON RECREATION

10^th January 2015 – Welsh National League (Wrexham Area) Premier Division

After a Christmas and New Year period where surprisingly I managed to watch the grand total of ZERO games either through postponed games or illness (and legitimate illness and not Christmas hangovers if that’s what you’re thinking), I was chomping at the bit to attend my first game of 2015 to make up for a lack of games during the festive period. After questioning which game to travel to on Twitter, a tweet came back from my mate Nick Owen (@NickOwen1) asking if I fancied watching his side Penyffordd play at the weekend, especially as he had now been brought back into the first team fold. Together with an encouragement from the Penyffordd Twitter account as well (@penyfforddfc), the decision was made – a trip to Penyffordd it was!

As you have read in previous blogs, this would not be the first time I have seen Penyffordd play this season as a few weeks prior to Christmas I had seen their Welsh National League match against Ruthin Town. That day they had been decimated by the home side as their defence was as watertight as a bottomless bucket, leading to a rampant Ruthin to dispatched them by the crazy scoreline of 9-4. Clearly I had caught Peny on “one of those days” and the performance did not give the true reflection of how decent the team was considering they were second in the league at the time. So I was interested to see how they fared on their home ground and if they had improved defensively since the first time I had seen them.

RUTHIN TOWN 9 – 4 PENYFFORDD F.C.

13^th December 2014 – Welsh National League (Wrexham Area)

For this whole week prior to this weekend, I was completely undecided on which game to travel to. Cymru Alliance games at Conwy and Llandudno looked very appealing, as did the Welsh Premier game at Bala and even venturing over the border to Eng-er-land to see Witton Albion play was also on the list. However after some careful consideration, I committed myself to head in a southerly direction into delve into deepest Denbighshire to encounter my first game of Welsh National League action this season. The WNL game I would endeavour to watch was Ruthin Town take on Penyffordd in another Denbighshire versus Flintshire derby. This match stood out for me initially as Buckley Town’s manager Tom Taylor advised me it would be a potentially decent game to go visit from the list stated above. Plus I was keen to see the standard of football in the WNL this season as I have not been to a WNL match in a long time, and to compare it with the standard of the similar levelled Welsh Alliance (both leagues are on the third tier of the Welsh football pyramid). Finally it was a great chance to tick off another ground from the list as I had not visited Ruthin’s ground before.

It looked promising to be a decent match as it was second versus third in the table, with Penyffordd having the better start to the season. They were 6 points ahead of their rivals today but had played a couple more games. Both teams were looking to get back on track after both suffering defeats the previous weekend – Penyffordd surprisingly losing in the NEWFA Challenge Cup to fellow Flintshire side AFC Brynford 3-1, whilst Ruthin had taken the lead but were narrowly beaten by league leaders Hawarden Rangers 2 goals to 1 in their last WNL game. With both teams aiming to regain some momentum going into the Christmas & New Year period, I was looking forward to this match!