Kingfishers Composure Seals Win Monmouth Town 2 Llantwat Fartre 0
Watching Monmouth Town's Kingfishers is like a visit to the Saturday Matinees so fondly remembered by some of our older citizens. One week it's swashbuckling and cavalier, others pure comedy, at other times drama, tales of bitter betrayal or fantastic comebacks against the odds. This was a classic goodies v baddies with promotion hopefuls Llantwit Fardre seemingly dropping any pretence at playing football and intent instead on engaging in a game that owed more to the egg shaoped ball than the beautiful game as tackle after tackle flew in with little regard to winning the ball or anyone's safety.
Ten minutes later and it was a job to tally the carnage
Within one minute Smith had blasted Monmouth into an early lead with a terrific free kick which flew into the far corner. On five minutes the visiting centre half was sent packing for hacking Ford off the ball and on ten minutes Town's goalkeeper Ian Jenkins was on his way to hospital with a five inch gash in his rib cage courtesy of another reckless flying challenge. Four more Llantwit players had also enters the referee's book by half time.
With no reserve goalkeeper on the bench Dominy donned the gloves and the Kingfishers retrenched despite having an extra man as they sought to preserve their lead and hit Llantwit on the counter. That Llantwit did not even come close to getting a shot on goal worthy of the name or even create any passages of play that would indicate their league position was a tribute to superb defence and calm authority exhibited by the massed Monmouth ranks.
Strangely, and perhaps wary of a disastrous egg chasing defeat later in the day, the Llantwit management and supporters saw it differently, adopting some kind of paranoia that saw enemies from England in the referee, the Monmouth players, supporters and even the lady who makes the tea!.
Whatever. The fact is that Town saw out then game comfortably, and spent the last fifteen minutes setting up a few more chances with the marauding Bowen unsettling the Fardre defence every time the ball went anywhere near him and superbly setting up Smith to smash the crossbar and with ten minute remaining Harris to make his way from the bench to calmly slot home a deserved winner to the obvious delight of his substantial supporters' club.
Manager Nick Oxford was not nearly so verbal this week but was equally delighted at the response of his team after the previous week's surrender to Aberbargoed "Not the prettiest of games for us really and it was clear that Llantwit wanted to come and spoil for the first half at least. We stood up really well to them although it was difficult losing our goalkeeper and our main creative player within such a short space of time. It's all about results now and another win puts us higher up the table. Neville Harris showed great attitude to stay focussed and get us the winner. The perfect answer to my criticisms of last week. To get our first clean sheet was also surprising but Dan Dominy had a great game in goal and Azzy Davies and Justin Harris were superb again."
Next week town are at home to another team with one eye on promotion AFC Llwydcoed. (kick off 2pm).