Friday 22nd September 2023 ko 19:00

West Wales Premier League

CWMAMMAN UNITED 6 (T Smith 28 C Davies 59p Rees 61og Wickham 63 E Smith 67 77)

AFC GLAIS 3 (Gregory 12 Smith 35 Robb-Gregory 49)

Bowles sent off 73 (second booking)

Att 242

Entry £3

Programme £2

When the West Wales Premier League approached GroundhopUK owner Chris Berezai to invite us to organise a hop for their league, I was more than a little intrigued. For a start I’m more than aware that the restructure of Welsh club football has rather passed this site by- for example I haven’t watched a single Tier 3 Ardal (Regional) League game so far! Then the pandemic got in the way of things, and to add to that a new league was created for the West of Wales.

The idea was straightforward, to create a feeder league from the best of the Swansea, Neath, Carmarthenshire, and Pembrokeshire Leagues. That of course involves the men in blazers giving up something, so the Swansea League fought the idea tooth and nail and so far the Pembrokeshire League has failed to supply a single club. That latter fact did produce a wry smile at GroundhopUK, after our attempts to replace the Ceredigion Hop with one in the Pembrokeshire League back in 2016!

In fact, the only issues we’ll have with West Wales Premier League is that there is only one division, hopefully some club churn will lengthen our stay here, and Cwmmaman United is as far as I know is the only floodit club we hadn’t already visited. But elsewhere, we could dust off the infrastructure we’d used for the Ceredigion Hops which meant a welcome return to the Ivy Bush Hotel in Carmarthen; certainly everyone seemed to remember there was Felinfoel Brewery’s beers on tap…

Confusingly Cwmamman United actually play in Glamaman but it wasn’t an evening for semantics! It was my one revisit of the weekend, since I’d visited Grenig Park in 2014 for one of those oddities- the derby that isn’t – it was Cwmamman United vs Cwmaman Institute and the two teams were only in the same division for two seasons!

Back then the club had, a one official put it, half a set of floodlights and a tin shed. These days the half set of lights are used for the training pitch, the ground is now fully enclosed and there are 3 seated stands; yes quite a transformation!

In fact, the biggest issue was that the clubhouse is on the main road and the changing rooms, and tea hut are still a fair distance from the pitch. A lot of the attendance had spent the day travelling to be there so there was money to be made in catering. Sadly, that proved to be difficult for the club, the burgers, bacon rolls, and hot dogs sold well, but a camp stove, gazebo, and curry would been extremely lucrative- Cwm Wanderers proved that point on the Sunday.

But we did get the game of the weekend. A glance at the programme told that Glais were rock bottom of the table without a point, so when in the 49th minute they were 3-1 ahead we all thought we were witnessing something unexpected.

I say that, but Chris was stood by a league official who quietly opined that Glais do tend to run out of steam. He was proved to be right as Cwmamman roared back to score 5 unanswered goals in less than half-an-hour and as if to add insult to defeat on Glais one was an own goal and captain Luc Bowles was sent off too!

The fans loved it, but I did feel rather sorry for Glais as their heads dropped, even if it was a superb way to open our stint in the West Wales Premier League. We picked our way back to Carmarthen, some of the hoppers made for the pubs, but Robyn and I settled for a quiet pint back in the hotel bar. It was good to be back.