Friday 15th April 2016 ko 19.30

Welsh League Division One

GARDEN VILLAGE 2 (Morris 36 Matthews 63)

TON PENTRE 1 (Davis 52)

Att 108

Entry, Programme, and Sausage & Chips- Special GroundhopUK deal £7

Back in 2010 I found myself on a working visit to South Wales, so on the basis that no trip anywhere is complete without a football match I pondered where to head. It boiled down to either Gorseinon-based Garden Village or Mayhill-based West End. I plumped for Garden Village, I’ve no idea why, I haven’t yet got to West End, and so I allowed myself a wry smile when Garden Village became the obvious precursor to the inaugural Carmarthenshire Hop.

I say obvious, because save for the fact that the club is in Carmarthenshire, the club are the first and only club to graduate to the Welsh League from the Carmarthenshire League via the play-off system in place today.

I ended up meeting the coach at the ground, no bad thing it always helps to have someone in situ well in advance. Although this game wasn’t part of the hop, we’d negotiated a meal/entry/programme deal so the coach phoning 20 minutes out helped coordinate the timing of the catering.

The club dealt with 50-or-so hoppers easily, so easily if you hadn’t looked in the programme you wouldn’t have realised that on the playing side of things they were rock-bottom of the table with only 3 draws to their credit.

They certainly didn’t play like a side doomed as they are to relegation, and fought back from conceding an equaliser to force that morale-boosting first win.

It was a highly convivial evening, those first games of the weekend tend to be, and the evening continued after the break in the hotel bar back in Carmarthen.