Bedlinog - 35

THE lack of a natural scrum-half cost Abergavenny their biggest loss of the season to date, revealed coach Gary Lawrence in the aftermath of a hugely disappointing defeat at home to Bedlinog.

"In hindsight losing by this sort of point margin has been on the cards for a couple of weeks now. Ever since we lost our first choice number nine James Harris to injury, we have been struggling to fill the role."

"Paul Cornock, who we played at number eight last season, has proven his versatility by acting as our stand-in scrum-half in recent games, and he has done a fantastic job in that position, but at this level of rugby any lack of experience anywhere on the field will catch up with you and make you pay," explained Lawrence.

Although Aber started off brightly enough and opened the scoring with a Steve Lang penalty in the first five minutes, the visitors made a storming reply by running in four tries.

Aber had little to say about Bedlinog's dominance of the match until the last ten minutes when their game picked up and winger James Smith touched down for the claret and amber's only try of the afternoon.

Lawrence told the Chronicle, "One of our main problems was the ball was not put on the plate well and often enough. We shipped too much poor ball onto the backs who in turn were pretty pedestrian in their performance.

"In fairness to Bedlinog they attacked and defended well, but we should and could have had a lot more impact on that game.

"For example we managed to turn the ball over, only to kick it straight back down the throats of a dangerous Bedlinog back three.

"We should have been seizing on opportunities like that to run with the ball and go on the counter.

"I think perhaps that's something of the problem with our game at present. Our scrum and line-out are functioning well, but we're not so clever in loose play. We could probably do with a few more ball carriers to make the yards, and that's why we're currently looking at other clubs to pick up a few new players before our next league game.

"Hopefully James Harris will be returning in a few weeks at scrum-half, but ideally we need more than one natural number nine, so that's another problem we're going to have to address in the near-future."

In the wake of Saturday's result Abergavenny sit third from bottom in Division Two East on ten points, after having played eight and won only one.

It's not panic stations for the club just yet, but they will definitely need to get their act together before they face a top of the table and unbeaten Tredegar side away when they return to league action on December 6.

Before that testing encounter Aber will meet Croesyceiliog in the SWALEC Cup a week on Saturday, but just to keep the players on their toes the club have arranged a friendly fixture with Tredegar Ironsides tonight at Bailey Park.

The game kicks-off at 7.15 pm, and if you still haven't had your fill of fireworks why not pop along for some explosive action.