Captain’s Blog

Its been a tough summer for the Ponty squad, one of the toughest I can remember in terms of the conditioning work we’ve been put through, even though I spent most of the time watching on from the sidelines!

All the effort that the boys put in started to show its worth in our pre-season friendly games, and will carry us into the new league season fitter and stronger than we have been for a long time. Our fitness will be a key factor in what promises to be a very competitive league, if we can finish games strongly and do enough to seal important wins in the last twenty minutes or so of some tight encounters.

As I mentioned, a lot of my summer was spent with my leg in plaster after suffering an injury back in March, but as soon as I got the all clear to train, things moved on quickly, back into full contact work and now I will be putting my hand up for selection at the start of the new season. There will be a lot of competition in all positions as we have recruited well, but I have the 350 appearances for Ponty in my sights and will be going all out for that.

There are a lot of new faces in the squad, promising youngsters from local clubs, and confidence is on a high with the new season about to start. The Premiership promises to be a top quality competition with the added bonus of far more coverage with live televised games. There is also the prospect of relegation and no-one will want to be drawn into that danger zone.

Our aim at Pontypridd will be to consolidate a place at the top end of the table going into the new year, hopefully then to launch a bid for honours. I can’t see any one team running away with the league, teams will take points off each other along the way, but we need to be up there amongst the leading pack.

A good cup run will also be a target, after the huge disappointment of going out in the first round last season. The cup means a lot to the club and its supporters, so we will keep that competition very much in focus as well.

So it will be Bedwas away on Saturday – always a tough place to visit – and we need to hit the ground running going into the new campaign. Bedwas, like us, have seen quite a few comings and goings on the player front and could be something of an unknown quantity, but will offer a challenge that we need to take seriously. We will concentrate very much on our own game, hopefully with some good weather allowing us to play the open style of rugby that we like and to get the new season off to a winning start.

Dafydd Lockyer

29/08/18