Last Gasp Goal Foils Mardy

Once more featuring a number of younger players, Mardy started well against last season's Gwent Central One Champions Fairfield United and put together some confident moves with Owen Vaughan volleying over after ten minutes before going even closer shortly afterwards when his goalbound header was tipped over by keeper Gareth Williams. However, they took a deserved lead after fifteen minutes when a through ball from Nathan Price released Dan Wait and he took the ball at pace before drilling a low shot past Williams for a well worked goal. The visitors continued to hold the upper hand for the first half hour but were rather undeservedly behind by 2-1 at the interval after mistakes at the back resulted in goals for the home team.

Another sloppy start to the second half resulted in a well taken headed goal soon after the restart tp make the score 3-1 to Fairfield.  The goal shook Mardy out of their lethargic start to the half and they began to revert to the confident form they had shown earlier in the game resulting in a picture book goal after sixty five minutes to cut the deficit to 3-2. The move was started when a lovely through ball from Matt Wham released Price and he outpaced the defence before rounding Williams and squaring the ball for young Ellis Morgan to score into an empty net. Three minutes later the scores were level when Vaughan got to the byline and pulled the ball back for Price to score with a shot into the top corner meaning he had been involved in all three of his sides goals. Mardy continued in the same vein and looked as if they could go on to win the game but, with time running out and Mardy's rhythm probably disrupted by a number of substitutions, Fairfield threw everything into a number of late attacks and managed to grab a winner with a minute remaining. Despite the result, a competitive friendly will no doubt have been a big help to new manager Dai Sadler.

Depending on pitch availability, the Club hope to hold an in-house Firsts v Reserves game this Saturday before the season proper begins on August 2^nd with an FAW Trophy game against West Wales Premier team Dafen Welfare.

Nathan Price