Llandovery RFC v Pontypool RFC

Pontypool RFC step up their pre-season preparations with a tough test at Indigo Premiership outfit Llandovery RFC tomorrow afternoon.

A trip to Church Bank is a challenging fixture for most clubs and backs coach Shaun Connor is eager to see how well Pooler match up to a team the club hope to be facing more regularly in future league campaigns.

The Drovers have finished fourth for the past three seasons and were runners-up in 2017/18. They won the WRU Cup as recently as 2017 and will provide a stern test for the men in red, white and black in another friendly split up into three 30-minute periods.

Pooler head west full of confidence after opening pre-season with a thumping 69-21 victory over Dings Crusaders RFC, which proved to be the perfect start to Connor’s life in the Pontypool dug-out.

“I really enjoyed the game. It was just nice to be back to rugby on a Saturday afternoon,” explained Connor.

“Performance-wise for the first two 30-minute periods we were very good. The first ten minutes they attacked us pretty well but we defended really well and I felt we got on top of our attack for the next 40-50 minutes.

“The last 30 [minutes] our discipline really let us down, which allowed them to get territory in the game and that’s what led to us conceding points.”

Head coach Leighton Jones recently spoke about the new standards that have been set since the arrivals of Connor and Lewis Roberts, head of rugby operations, but the former insisted he hasn’t changed much.

“It was tough through COVID for these boys,” added Connor.

“Tom [Hancock] left midway through last season so they were without a backs coach so [I’ve] just [added] a fresh pair of eyes and slightly different ideas and variations on what they’ve done in the past.

“It’s not reinventing the wheel; it’s just about getting better at the basic skills and enjoying the rugby.

“[We’ll] keep working on our attacking shape.

“We tried to bring a few attacking principles in, which came through on the weekend.

“It’s just drilling those and, as with any attack shape, it’s about player’s making decisions and if we make good decisions then I think we are going to threaten teams.

“The challenge for us on the weekend is we’re going up against a quality Premiership team.

“We’ve got aspirations to play in the Premiership so it’ll be a big test for us but we need to put on a performance to show we can match them.

“There’s not many sterner tests than Llandovery so they provide a perfect challenge for us and it’ll be good to see where we are at and it’ll give us a good focus going into our first league game.”

There are nine changes to the side that eased past Dings last weekend with centre Dai Langdon coming in for his first Pontypool appearance.

Scrum-half Dan Babos is handed his first start alongside winger Mathew Powell and flanker Callum Davies, although they have both played for the club previously.

Mike Herbert, who wasn’t involved in Bristol, starts at number eight while Luke Fleming-Jones, Ieuan Jones and Dragons Academy star Huw Anderson also come into the squad.