The Long and Winding Road.

What a start it’s been to the Cymru Alliance League season! The Summer months are always a drag for football supporters (apart from last year when Gareth Bale and his mates gave us plenty of excitement!) and whilst the pre-season fixtures help us with our fix, it’s not quite the same as the real thing.

The build up to the new campaign saw all and sundry predict that the second tier of Welsh football would eclipse the Welsh Premier League for thrills and spills this season and, whilst it’s too early to say if this will be the case, even at this fledgling stage, the Cymru Alliance is certainly not falling short  in the entertainment stakes.

Just two weeks in and we’ve had plenty of goals, upsets and controversies and I’m talking only of Caernarfon Town here! Let me explain….

The first Saturday of the season saw us heading to Penrhyncoch in mid Wales and, despite the unabating traffic and the rather arduous journey which always reminds me of The Beatles classic ‘The Long and Winding Road’ I do enjoy my visits to Cae Baker, where there’s a good welcome to be had and plenty of vocal support from the locals to get the heart pumping! The Canaries’ latest visit to the ground proved no exception and, after a tough, and very entertaining ninety minutes, goals by Darren Thomas and Jamie Breese gave Town the victory they deserved.

With five matches to catch up on in this blog I’ve decided against rehashing what I’ve already written in the match reports, which you can find on the club’s new official website (here’s a link to the reports:  https://www.caernarfontownfc.co.uk/Matchreport.aspx?id=134967 ) but the 2-1 scoreline did not in my opinion accurately reflect Town’s dominance on the day, although the hosts gave it a real go at salvaging a point in the closing stages. To summarise the encounter, the Cofis enjoyed the lions’ share of possession but could not take advantage of a number of decent goalscoring opportunities and, once Stefan Davis halved Town’s lead, Caernarfon had to show plenty of grit and composure to secure the points, which they did.

I can’t see many teams defeating the Roosters on their own ground and so it was a good, solid start to the season by the team but unfortunately they could not make it a winning return to action at the Oval seven days later when Holyhead Hotspur took the spoils, courtesy of a 2-1 victory.   

These days the Cymru Alliance League is top heavy with teams from up the coast and therefore local derbies are sparse for Caernarfon Town. Holyhead and Porthmadog are seen by many as our nearest local rivals in the league and have become our regular derbies in recent years so the defeat to Campbell Harrison’s side was a hard pill to swallow. What made it worse is that the key point in the match was Danny Brookwell’s sixteenth minute dismissal for a foul that also resulted in a successful penalty for the visitors. I have been informed that the referee told one of Caernarfon’s players that whilst he agreed Danny’s challenge was outside the area, he awarded the penalty because the fouled player fell inside the box. This is the first I’ve heard about this new rule and, having asked a local referee to verify it, I am still unsure if it exists. Caernarfon had started the match well but one thing we all know with Hotspur is that they’re always up for a battle and once they doubled their lead through McGuinness it was always going to be a tough task for the Cofis to salvage a point.

It was interesting to see Town manager Iwan Williams reshuffling his pack in the second half in an attempt to get something from the match and his ploy of pushing Clive Williams up front as a focal point seemed to work well. For the first time since Iwan’s arrival at the club he took a more direct approach and the players will probably feel disappointed they didn’t manage a draw as they certainly created the opportunities to get one after Nathan Craig pulled a goal back. It was a good effort by the players and I wonder how many of them and also the spectators at the match would agree with the writer of Holyhead’s match report, who thought his side had made the Cofis look ordinary?

Job done against Porthmadog, but only just....

There was a quick opportunity to bounce back from the defeat when we visited Porthmadog three days later for another one of those rare local derbies. Someone told me at the match that the Cofis had won the last eight encounters between the sides and this was pretty impressive because Port are a good side, and have been for a number of years. Having won their first two matches, Craig Papyrnik’s side were confident and played like it, proving a match for Caernarfon and twice taking the lead but Town pegged them back through Gareth Edwards and Nathan Craig before Darren Thomas struck a last minute winner.

I can’t recall many times we’ve clinched a victory so late on in a match but it was a great feeling, and a great finish by the Cofi Messi, who has started the season in scintillating form. Everyone knows how good our talisman is so there’s no need for me to wax lyrical about him but if he continues in the vein he’s started this campaign then he’s going to have a big impact on how we get on. The same can be side of Jay Gibbs, who I believe had his best match in a Caernarfon shirt during the victory at the Traeth. Iwan mentioned in his post-match interview that Jay was outstanding, despite enduring a hard time from the locals during the match and I hope he took the banter as a compliment because, from my experience anyway, the more vocal supporters usually target the oppositions’ most influential players, and Jay more than took up the challenge of silencing them with his actions on the pitch. He was named the supporters man of the match, and deservedly so, despite some stiff competition from his team-mates.

Jay Gibbs was outstanding against Port. 

Before moving on, I have to include a few special mentions. First, to the Porthmadog officials and volunteers who were as friendly as ever and were more than ready to discuss the match despite the defeat. To Gareth Evans for conducting our post-match interview in Welsh, thus proving that people do speak Welsh on the wrong side of the Felinheli bypass. And finally, to Iwan, who refused to settle for the draw and urged his team forward in search of victory!

So, not for the first time in recent years I left Port’s ground with a smile on my face until, that is, I realised there was still a match report to write and a few videos to share before the end of the day, although Messi’s winner made it a much more attractive prospect!

A home fixture with Denbigh Town was next and it promised to be another tough test of our aspirations. The Central Park outfit have been touted all summer as title challengers but had lost two of their opening three matches and so I’m sure they would have seen the trip to the Oval as the perfect opportunity to kick start their campaign and make a statement of their intent. It was good to see Danny Sullivan before the match, the former Town player having joined Denbigh after a frustrating season with us last time out. Danny’s a really good player and joined us a few weeks into the 2016/17 campaign but could not quite manage a run of successive matches in the starting line-up. Having captained Buckley and Flint before coming to us I’m sure it would have been difficult for him not to start every match but he still managed to make a good impression during his short stint with us, and who could ever forget that cracker he scored in the Welsh Cup against Rhyl? Left peg, top corner just about covers it!

Danny Brookwell scored a brace against Denbigh.

With recent signings such as Sully, Jake Eyre and Josh Davies in their team, Eddie Maurice-Jones’ squad looks strong but, on the day, they were swept away by the Cofis and, had it not been for the heroics of Goalkeeper Jonathan Hill-Dunt, the scoreline could have had an even more lop-sided look than the seven nil it eventually ended as.

Iwan’s men sprinted out of the blocks and Nathan Craig set the tone for the afternoon when he forced Hill-Dunt into a desperate fingertip save to keep the ball out of his net directly from the kick-off. His attempts to keep us at bay, through a combination of scrambling saves and his usual game management lasted just thirteen minutes, when Gareth Evans smashed the ball into the roof of the net after being set up by Darren Thomas. Another strike by Gareth and further netfinders by Chris Williams, Nathan Craig, Darren Thomas and a Danny Brookwell brace gave the Cofis an impressive victory that put them joint second in the league behind Guilsfield. Gaz Evans was voted man of the match and deservedly so. I was surprised when he told me after the Porthmadog match that he didn’t feel he had been playing well because I think he’s been pretty impressive in all our league matches thus far. He obviously has lots of quality and seems to me to have settled really well into the side, so if he thinks there’s more to come from him then he’s going to be an incredible addition to the squad.

Gareth Evans.

Incidentally, it was good to catch up with former Town player Derek Highdale during the match and even more pleasing to hear him say how impressed he was with the present Cofi team. Derek, of course, was part of John Aspinall’s side of twenty years ago who went toe to toe for a time with full-time professionals Barry Town in the League of Wales. My mate Bob reminded Derek of the time he and team-mate Chris Waring started brawling with Aberystwyth Town supporters at the Oval, and he was hit with an umbrella by an old lady near the turnstile as he walked off the pitch! Not surprisingly, he still remembers the incident!

The impressive victory over Denbigh set the side up nicely for a crack at Welsh Premier League outfit  Llandudno, who hosted us in the first round of the Word Cup four days later. We had played the Seasiders in a testimonial for Lee Thomas during the summer and on that day both sides had put out strong line-ups in an entertaining first half before giving some former players a run-out after the break. This time, of course, the managers named their strongest line-ups and there was certainly nothing friendly about the match! That’s not to say it was an overly physical encounter but there was no quarter given and, despite the post-match comments of Llandudno manager Alan Morgan, I thought it was an entertaining, and exciting encounter.  

Llandudno is a classy club, and they have an excellent set up at The Giant Hospitality Stadium. I always enjoy my visits there, despite having seen the Cofis on the receiving end of a few defeats, and last week was no exception. I’ve mentioned in past blogs how impressed I am with their ground, from the main entrance and turnstile to the players tunnel, the social club to the hospitality room, the ground staff to the impressive 4G pitch. During last week’s visit, however, I was most impressed by the Caernarfon Town side! In short, the players in yellow and green were outstanding and if I’m being absolutely honest, we were by far the best side on the pitch, and fully deserved the 1-0 victory, courtesy of a Danny Brookwell goal. This is a second point that I disagree on with Seasiders manager Morgan, who announced that no one deserved to win or lose. Having struck the woodwork, had two decent penalty shouts, seen a Jamie Breese effort hacked off the line and a handful of other near-misses, I think the Cofis were the only team that deserved the victory.  

Messi was in top form against Llandudno. 

After any particularly impressive victory it can sometimes be very hard not to go overboard when writing an official match report for the club and I always do my best to be as respectful as possible to the opposition sides. I’m not sure that I always achieve this, but if not, it’s certainly not intentional. With this in mind, I was disappointed with Llandudno’s twitter feed on the night, which I feel was less than fair to the Caernarfon’s professional performance.

As this is a personal blog, I have no qualms in saying that the tweet attributed to Llandudno’s official twitter feed concerning a foul on Gareth Evans during the match was unfair, uncalled for and unprofessional. I won’t repeat the tweet here but I’m sure you’ll find it on their feed if you look and when you do, you may understand why I find it so disappointing. 

Getting back to the football itself, it’s hard to point out a stand-out performer in such a good team performance and whilst Darren Thomas was voted the supporters man of the match, which I would agree with, I also think Gareth Edwards was exceptional at the back, Jay Gibbs strong in midfield and Jamie Breese outstanding when he joined the action in the second half.

Gareth Edwards.

So, after an eventful start to the season, we’ve now had a few days to recover due to the international break and the team travels to Rhyl this Saturday for one of the most anticipated encounters of the season. We all know the score: Rhyl were relegated from the top tier last season and are highly fancied to return at the first attempt this year whilst Caernarfon are desperate to get a spot at the top table for the first time in many years. We’re just four matches into the league season so it’s early days yet but lots of people will be looking at this as a clash of title encounters. There’s certainly a feeling of this being a ‘Big Match’ in the lead up to the fixture and as is always the case when two good sides clash, it’s going to be an exciting, nervy battle, and impossible to call. One thing’s for sure, though, Iwan will have the Cofis well prepared and the players will be ready to burst  out of the blocks!
But it's early days and the Beatles got it right, it's a  Long and Winding Road....