Fleur de Lys - 21

WITH only eight minutes on the clock, Abergavenny were leading fellow relegation contenders Fleur de Lys 20-7 in last Saturday's Division Two East basement battle, and seemed surefire odds on favorites to take the prize.

However, it proved to be a very unlucky '13' point lead for the claret and ambers, as somehow before the final whistle sounded, the Fleur had managed to claw back every single one of those seemingly unassailable points, and add a cheeky little extra one of their own to give them a slender, but nevertheless, vital victory.

So to Fleur the spoils, and to Abergavenny? Well! It remains to be seen wether they'll sink or swim in the troubled waters of Division Two East, but it does promise to be a very interesting and critical 'hearts in mouths' time for the club and its supporters as they approach the do or die series of final and decisive games.

"What's disappointing about this result, other than stating the obvious, is lessons that we thought we had learned as a club earlier this season, had obviously not been learnt hard enough," barked a disappointed head coach Gary Lawrence after the game at Bailey Park.

"After a hard-fought away win against Brynmawr, we went into Saturday's fixture focused, but not over-confident, and played some good quality rugby, only for all our efforts to be undone in the last eight minutes because we failed to close the game down and keep things tight.

"Two aspects of our game we thought we had rectified earlier in the season," added a disgruntled Lawrence.

After a pretty solid 70 minutes by Abergavenny, which saw three tries being run over in the form of Dan Haymond, Paul Cornock and Tom Macpherson and a conversion and penalty by Steve Lang, the claret and ambers looked to end the game in the way it had played out - with the home team in the driving seat.

Unfortunately, two late converted tries by the visitors ensured that Fleur took the spoils right at the death.

"We went from chasing a bonus point victory to a two try loss," sighed Lawrence.

"It's annoying to think we played the majority of rugby in that game, and put loads of phases together, but failed to finish them and run away with the game when we had the opportunity.

"It must be said that our forwards had a great game and we were very strong up front, but when we should have just stuck the ball up our jumpers and retained possession, we didn't, and paid the price.

Lawrence added, "Fleur kicked long throughout the game and our back three didn't deal with them too well, and although it didn't lead to any real try scoring opportunities for the visitors, we were getting caught behind our lines way too much.

"In fact, one of Fleur's late tries came from a charge down, which just goes to show the sort of error-riddled game we were having in certain areas of our play."

On a more positive note, Lawrence told the Chronicle, "Stuart Davies who came in for an injured Jessie Nowers at centre had a great game. He broke the lines time and time again and formed a good centre partnership with Dan Haymond who scored our first try.

"In fact, after Haymond's try which was a team effort involving loads of people and benefitted from phase after phase of play, I thought, 'Here we go, the standard has been set.'"

Obviously the 'standard' had other ideas and decided to drop much later on in the game, but as Lawrence pointed out, "Although we let Fleur in when we shouldn't have. We never gave up. Right until the end the players were striving to pull the game back, and at least that's something, because with five games remaining we need to show a lot of fight if we're to survive this season."

With Abergavenny now caught up in the murky mix of five teams who are all potential relegation bedfellows, every game for the claret and mabers now takes on an extra edge, especially when they are against the top-placed two teams in the league.

This Saturday Aber are away to second-placed Bedlinog, before a showdown with league leaders Tredegar at home.

Lawrence said, "No-one expects us to get anything from our next two games, but then again no-one expected us to get anything from Brynmawr at home. As far as we're concerned none of the remaining fixtures are easy fixtures, but I think if we can bag at least two wins we should stay afloat."