Pontypool

It’s seen the highs of visiting All Blacks and a dominant Pooler, and the lows of arson and financial collapse. But now, after a decade of turmoil, Pontypool Park will once again play host to top-flight Welsh club rugby. 

By 4pm on a Friday, everything seems to be shut in the valley town of Pontypool. Although, in fairness, it looks like much of it didn’t open at all today, or the days, weeks, months – and perhaps even years – before, for that matter.

Huddled around the Afon Lwyd river, just north of Newport in the heart of Gwent, this community of little more than 28,000 is surrounded by hillsides so steep, the sheep need goat-like tendencies, and greenery and woodland is plentiful. Yet while this landscape is full of life, not least the 158-acre Pontypool Park at its epicentre, the main streets are lined with too many memories of a place once busy.

Once powered by coal and iron, like many places in these parts, it’s fallen on harder times. But, while the flaking pub signs and sun-bleached shop names remain of places long since closed, there’s also a sense of a town waiting to happen.

A church, locked up for however long, and where nature has taken over the gardening duties, has a rewilding beauty to it. And other buildings spliced throughout the town retain a timeless charm of a more prosperous time past. 

Some locals, however, are taking matters into their own hands: art is filling the commercial voids. Instead of shopfronts full of passing circus posters and glass doorways piled with unopened junk mail, they’ve been used as a canvas. Bright mosaics cover grey walls and fill underpasses, and giant murals cover spaces that may once have been a thriving Woolworths. 

And rugby is an ever present. It’s the muse for paintings beneath bridges and on stretches of the main streets; bronze rugby figures leap above a town portrait; even one of the now defunct pub signs – The Scrum Half – has a retro charm to it, reminding everyone that this is and has always been a rugby town. Since 1868 in fact.

Not just locally either: Pontypool was one of the founding fathers of the South Wales Cup competition that started in 1877, and was also at the birth of the Welsh Rugby Union in 1881. It stuttered at the start: folding, reforming – combining the clubs Pontypool Thursdays, Pontypool Saturdays and Pontymoel 1901 – but it’s still here, pride of place in Pontypool Park, just down the road from the ski slope, the oldest and longest in Wales.

The Bank is slowly getting match ready, as fans begin to take their spot, half an hour before the 7.30pm kick-off. Backed onto a hillside leading up to the woodlands behind, the terraced rows of concrete steps are synonymous with good times, great games and big crowds. Tens of thousands used to cram onto this side of the ground to witness Pooler take on the greats. A spectacle for sure, and even today, it remains one. Beddau are the opponents tonight, a Friday in May. It’s the last home game of a remarkable unbeaten season that will see Pontypool end a journey of more than a decade that’s taken them from the brink of collapse to the Welsh Premiership – a place that’s been kept at arms’ length for too long.

Surveying the ground, looking for signs of trouble that never comes is one of a handful of stewards, Tony Williams. Been coming here long? “Yeah, man and boy,” he says, responding almost identically to many others we pose the question to. “I remember big, big times, Terry Cobner, and that front row, those were the good years. But I think they’re coming back.”

“I’m just there keeping an eye on the Bank over there,” he continues. “It’s the Pontypool supporters you need to watch,” he laughs. “Going back in the day we’d get twenty thousand in here, but health and safety nowadays...

“I’m eighty now,” he adds, “[stewarding] keeps you fit, don’t it?”

“I’m seventy,” chips in his colleague Albert. “Fifty years I’ve been here, man and boy. Best year was 1983, when we won the cup, and then these last five years to get us where we’ve got to now. The cup game last week was fantastic. Buzzing, the whole town was, we took about 2,500 with us down to the Millennium Stadium. 

“And before that we went to Ebbw Vale [for the semi-final, against Neath, winning 26-9] and filled the ground – the burger van there normally takes £200, but they took £1,500 off us that day.

“It’s all about down-to-earth, straightforward people,” continues Albert. “But they keep moving the goal posts; we’d get there and win the league and then they’d stick a stupid team against us – as Llanelli did. We’ve been knocked back time and again, but we’re almost there, and ‘Slug’, the coach, has built this all up – and when he started, he could barely get enough players on the pitch.”

Few individuals in rugby are so interwoven with their club as Graham Price. So intrinsically linked is he with his hometown club that one name is rarely spoken without the other. His era was the golden one, of the 1983 Welsh Cup win, big win after big win, not just taking mighty scalps but becoming a mighty scalp to be taken. It was an unstoppable Pooler side laced with internationals and he was in that front row, immortalised not only in statue form outside of the ground, but also in rugby history books the world over. The Viet Gwent. Graham, Bobby Windsor and Charlie Faulkner, the first same-club 1, 2, 3 to start for Wales. They only lost four times in their nineteen caps together, and also turned out as a unit for the British & Irish Lions. So famous, Max Boyce wrote a song about them – Pontypool Front Row.

Although, it has to be said, Graham was also part of the rather less-talked-about ‘bronze-ish’ age that went before, but in fairness that’s what happens when you play for a club across the ages. “The first time I actually played for Pontypool Rugby Club was 1968-9, for the second team,” says Graham, when we talk to him between his hospitality duties as club president. “I was in the first year of sixth form at the local grammar school and the PE teacher was trying to get a few of us to play.

“And the following year I played for the first team against Gloucester,” he says, adding, “bit different to playing school rugby. 

“This was the end of the 1960s and Pontypool weren’t very good in the 1960s,” explains Graham, now as sprightly a 71-year-old as you’re likely to see. “One historian describes the 60s as the ‘wilderness years’, we didn’t achieve anything. In my first full season we finished third from bottom of the old Western Mail Championship, which was made up of all the clubs that were considered first class.

“When Ray Prosser took over in 1970-71, we were even worse in his first season. We went from third from bottom to absolute bottom.”

Prosser, whose name adorns the club’s fairly recently refurbished grandstand, built the first Pontypool dynasty, coaching the side for eighteen years. “He was an unashamedly forward coach,” explains Graham. “He went to New Zealand with the 1959 Lions and was impressed by what he saw there, and used that as a template for what we did here, and it started with getting it right up front, particularly in the scrum. 

“At the time,” explains Graham, “the controller in every side in Wales was the outside half. Even though Gareth Edwards was at Cardiff, it was Barry John calling the shots. 

“But in New Zealand it was the scrum-half who was the master. And Ray had trouble finding the right scrum-half to do that, to take control in that way.

“It wasn’t really until we had David Bishop in 1981, that he found the scrum-half he wanted.”

Even today, Bishop and his lack of Welsh caps remains the subject of Welsh pub rugby talk. Together with Mark Ring, who joined the club in 1987, they remain one of the most thrilling partnerships to have graced Welsh club rugby. But before that, Prosser had to build the pack. “We played in this [New Zealand] way, forward-orientated,” continues Graham, “and we started to put results together, and while we were bottom that first year, all of a sudden, all these fancy sides realised they had a game on their hands...

“I was looking at a photograph last night, of a Pontypool game down at Bridgend. Of the nine players in shot, which included the scrum-half, eight of them were internationals,” he says. “We won the championship a couple of times in the 1970s and that was based on pure forward-orientated [rugby] and then, in the 1980s, while it was always based on the forwards, with David Bishop there, the backs, and the wingers would score as many as anyone.”

Graham recalls countless games, from the win over Llanelli in Prosser’s second season when they had four flankers on the pitch – one in the centre and one on the wing – to the time they beat Cardiff at the Arms Park, and were only denied a double against at Pontypool Park by a referee overruling the touch judges’ view that a penalty kick had gone over the posts. “It’s the only time I’ve ever seen it,” he says, still incredulous. “The line judges put the flags up, but he disallowed it. If that had been allowed, we’d have done the double over Cardiff for the first time in sixty years.”

Success brought the big names. Australia, twice, and New Zealand, changed their Welsh tour routines to face them. “It was always the fashionable clubs that traditionally got the touring sides, the Newport Cardiff, Swansea, Llanelli,” says Graham. “But then they started to give games to the sides that were doing best,
the championship or cup winners. 

“Crowds would be up to the treeline [that borders the large grass hillside on one side of the ground], and we had the All Blacks [featuring the likes of Fitzpatrick, Brooke and Kirwan] here in 1989, it was a huge crowd. The police used to try and say to us, ‘put a capacity on it’, but we couldn’t. There must have been 24,000 here that day.”

Although they lost to Australia [6-37 and 18-23] and New Zealand [6-47], some international club sides weren’t so lucky, as Pooler literally left their mark on opponents. “We used to frighten sides with our rucking,” says Graham. “And before games too. I remember one opposing captain was doing the coin toss, and there was always a lot of noise in the opponents’ changing room, but we didn’t believe in all that shouting, so ours was silent. And the referee said to this captain, ‘it’s unnerving, isn’t it?’.

“We played against Ponsonby here, a big club side in Auckland,” continues Graham, as another game pops to mind, “and we gave them a good booting. We knew they’d come at us rucking and we gave them a good booting back, and beat them. 

“Then, when I went to New Zealand with the Lions in 2005, I went to that club and most of those were still there and they all remembered Pontypool rugby club, and were saying ‘yeah you gave us a good kicking’.”

There’s no doubt rugby has made Pontypool famous. “It’s a fairly small town, we needed something to shout about, and this is what we’ve had,” says Graham. “I thought at times because we’ve been the jewel in the crown of the town, that perhaps the council should’ve made more of it...” 

A day celebrating one of rugby’s most iconic front rows would be a good start. “I was the first one, even though I was the youngest, because I came straight from school,” says Graham, explaining the formation of the Viet Gwent. “Then Charlie Faulkner, whose age was always a mystery – it was only later we found out that he was 32 when he joined Pontypool. Back then thirty was normally the end of your career, but he came over here from Cross Keys and just wanted to play some decent rugby for once in his life. 

“Prosser saw his talent and brought the best out of him, in his own inimitable way – Charlie took a lot of bollockings, with Prosser riding on his back as he did laps, showing the fitness level he needed. Then Bobby came; he hadn’t had a cap at that time, but he’d been in the Wales squad. But when he came to Pontypool, he actually got into the Welsh team for the first time.

“And the following year, the entire Pontypool front row got in for 1974-75 season. Charlie was 34 when he won his first cap.”

Graham’s time in the Pontypool first team lasted 23 seasons from his first game to his last, but he didn’t stop then. “I retired officially but used to come and train with the boys and play for the seconds, so my last game for the club was when I was 53.”

In that time, as player, committee member, president, cup wins have been few and far between, but they’ve been the best of days for Graham. “We were a great team when it came to the championship because we could consistently do what Prosser wanted us to, but the likes of Llanelli would play to peaks, they didn’t seem that bothered with the championship, it was the cups.”

The figures back them up: in one season they won 35 out of 36 games. “Cup matches we tended to slip up, we’d play against our bogey side, Cardiff, and Gerald Davies would score four tries, Gareth Edwards would be man of match, or Terry Holmes man of match, things like that. We’d lost out to Swansea, Llanelli, Bridgend, and then the year we won, we went through most of our bogey sides. Cardiff in the quarters [13-9], Bridgend in the semis [19-3], Swansea [18-6] in the final. The town was empty on that cup final day.”

Two weeks before we visit Pontypool, the club had enjoyed another cup day, taking the Championship Cup for the first time, beating title rivals Ystrad Rhondda 28-16 at the Principality Stadium. Graham was there as both president and long-term Pooler; for him this clubs means everything. “It means a lot, yeah,” he says, pausing to add, “You’ll be choking me up in a minute. 

“I grew up in Pontypool, and before I played for Pontypool rugby club, I was playing for Pontypool schools, as far back as thirteen, that’s why it means so much. All my family are Pontypool supporters, I went to the cup final, and both my daughters and their families went, my son and his eldest went – I had five grandchildren and three children there, in my capacity as president, it was just a great family day. I couldn’t be prouder.”

Pontypool have been relentless in the Championship this term. Unbeaten and, despite the presence of strong sides such as Neath, Bargoed, Cardiff Met and Ystrad Rhondda, their march to the title has seemed inevitable. Tonight’s opponents, Beddau, are no pushover, but after initial resistance, they find themselves 33-0 down to the home side.

The Bank is lively, as always. A win tonight and, without even playing, their title could be confirmed before they face the same opponents next week depending on what happens at Bargoed, who are the third side in a position to take one of the two promotion places – Neath occupy the second behind Pontypool. Either way, it’s the final home game of what is surely a Championship-winning and, more importantly, a promotion-securing season to Welsh club rugby’s top flight.

Two Pooler fans, Rod and Nick, are in their usual spot, around the halfway line on the Bank. “I’ve been coming since the 1960s, before that stand was built,” says Rod, pointing to the Ray Prosser Stand. “We had a temporary stand there when we played Australia, they borrowed it from Glamorgan cricket, and the sides had to get changed up in the school, because the old stand had burnt down...”

“We’ve only had this fence here recently, the last two or three years,” says Nick, highlighting the fence that now borders the Bank, separating it from the rest of the park. “Because it’s a public park and they had loads of problems with fires and drug paraphernalia on the touch line. Once it was secured, they developed the new stand.”

“And they had to get the long lease on the site too,” adds Rod.

As regulars at Pontypool Park, they’ve become good judges of the standard of the division. “At the moment there’s only us, Neath, Ystrad Rhondda and Bargoed, maybe five of us that are any good, then the rest...” begins Rod.

“Rubbish... in comparison,” finishes Nick.

“That said, when I used to watch them in the 1960s, we’d be lucky to beat Penarth,” says Rod. “But that cup final – two weeks ago – was brilliant. They had to keep opening sections of the ground, because the crowd kept coming and they didn’t expect it.”

Perhaps typical of many Welsh club fans, the pair put the success of their club, and the growing crowds, down to not being a region. “I suppose it’s because there’s a lot of clubs that have been left in the lurch by the regions, and they don’t want to watch regional rugby, they want a club,” surmises Nick. “Newport and Cardiff are in the shadows of a region, but we’re not.”

“And it didn’t help when they called the region Newport-Gwent Dragons in the first place,” adds Rod. “That got to a lot of Pontypool supporters.”

“It leaves a bitter taste doesn’t it?” agrees Nick.

In fairness to Pontypool fans, they’ve had plenty to contend with. Aside from the failed court case more than a decade ago that brought the club to its knees – more of which later – there were then three pre-Covid seasons of a ringfenced Premiership at a time when Pontypool dominated, winning three consecutive Welsh Championship titles. Then, when the drawbridge was lowered, they had to play a play-off against a Llanelli side that had finished twelfth out of sixteen in the Premiership. At the time, Pontypool had won 65 games from 66 over the preceding campaigns. Nigel Owens took control of the play-off at Aberavon’s Talbot Athletic ground, and Llanelli ran out 27-16 winners. But the controversy from the Pooler side was the inclusion of a number of Scarlets. Coupled with Llanelli’s decision to pull out of the league next season, the men in red aren’t the most popular club among the Pontypool faithful, neither are the WRU. “It’s like they make up the rules as they go along,” says Rod. “When we won the league, they made us play a play-off against Llanelli at Aberavon. I always say we’d beat Llanelli but we lost to the Scarlets, they brought the Scarlets on, seven of them I think it was.

“I’m just waiting to see what happens now when they [Llanelli] want to come back into the league. They’re expected to come back in, but if that was Pontypool we’d be starting at the bottom...”

A ‘them against us’ mentality has pervaded throughout the years, especially when it comes to the powers-that-be. “It’s been like that ever since they used to pick [Cardiff scrum-half] Robert Jones over David Bishop,” says Rod. “Even though David Bishop made him look like a schoolboy when he played him.

“When you had him and Mark Ring together,” continues Rod, “they didn’t know which one to watch.”

Nonetheless, finish the job in this game tonight – surely a formality at 33-0 – and then repeat the feat a few days later and nobody can stop them. “We play these again next Wednesday, and if we win, we’re guaranteed promotion,” explains Rod. “Our last two games, the opposition haven’t been able to get a side out, so credit to these for turning up,” adds Nick.

Promotion would be secured without playing, if Bargoed fail to beat Ystrad Rhondda tomorrow. After all the false dawns, are they now believing? “Talk to us the first game of next season when the WRU can’t do anything,” says Nick. “That’s what it feels like, like we still might not play for some reason or another. 

“Until that first game of the season and they step over the whitewash, I won’t believe it... because I don’t trust them.”

“I don’t,” agrees Rod.

Either way, rugby has still been a source of pride in these parts. The town, Rod says, isn’t quite what it once was – “dead,” he describes it succinctly, adding, “it used to be bustling” – but in Pontypool Park they have something special. “The place is steeped in history,” says Nick. “It’s magical, isn’t it? As you walked up to the ground today, you’ve got all the trees behind it, and there’s a rainbow over the ground. It’s special.”

Before a ball was kicked in 2011, Pontypool looked set to be relegated at the end of the season. The WRU announced their top club division, the Premiership, would be reduced from fourteen to ten teams, based on factors that varied from stadium criteria to results over the previous six seasons. Pontypool, together with Tonmawr, Bridgend and Carmarthen were initially chosen to drop down a level, only for the latter two to earn a reprieve due, it was alleged, to the intervention of their respective regions, Ospreys and Scarlets. 

A court case was launched by the then owners of Pontypool, back by sponsors, but they lost, and with it came a £400k legal bill. “We were hours away from going [out of business], literally,” explains Peter Jeffreys, the club’s executive chairman and lifelong Pontypool fan. “Fortunately, the solicitors were the people the money was owed to, and they were my solicitors as well, so I sat down with the directors at the time, and said, ‘look, if it was me, I’d put it through that you’re insolvent, you can’t carry on’. 

“But, cut a long story short, I made the lawyers an offer and I gave them till four o’clock on the Friday afternoon to accept it. At the very, very last minute, minutes away from deal time, I settled it up and ended up running the club from there.”

Nothing ever runs too smoothly for Pontypool though. “I had a stroke as soon as we took over so my son, Ben, who had no experience at all, ended up running things for a while.”

Ben then oversaw a transition in the club. “At the point we took over, we’d lost seventeen games on the bounce, and while there was a bit of a feelgood factor, we only had five players on the books, so we had to recruit.  

“We finished the season on a bit of a high though,” he says. As the ship slowly steadied, they went from losing all but one of their first twenty matches, to winning six of the last seven to finish two spaces above relegation. “The next season we didn’t do bad at all,” concludes Peter. “And then, obviously, it took a bit of cash to get things moving and then we had a successful run for seven or eight years. I mean, God, we were unbeaten for two seasons. We won 90 games out of 92. And we’ve just been sort of hamstrung, really, with the way the set-up has been.”

That ‘set-up’ being the ever-changing league structure, the cause of much chagrin for Rod, Nick, Alfred, Tony et al, and, much like his fellow fans, Peter also laments the Llanelli game – “outrageous,” he says, while also acknowledging, “they were too good for them on the night. 

“It’s been difficult,” he continues. “You can only do what we do, they make the rules. We can’t complain because we had our opportunity for promotion and we blew it,” he says, referencing the pre-ringfencing campaign of 2015/16, when they finished fifth. “We knew they were ringfencing it and we were stuck in that league for three years.

“But, it is what is it, the supporters are very, very upset, but we’ve just got on with it, and after all that we’ve got a reasonably good relationship with the WRU, we’ve not thrown our toys out of the pram.”

Covid then followed, keeping the club in a holding pattern, until this campaign. Even without promotion, the fans have continued to fill the Ray Prosser Stand and the Bank. “We had about a hundred or so watching us when we started, now we regularly get 1,000 to 1,500 every week,” he says. 

Not that it’s come without cost, in every sense. Peter, has ploughed a great deal of money into the club, but it’s not been without criticism from other clubs, envious of their assumed budget. “One thing I never thought would happen would be people calling Pontypool ‘Champagne Charlies’, which some of them do because they think you’ve thrown loads of money at it. 

“Okay, we’ve put a budget aside for it, but we don’t pay mega bucks,” he continues. “We’re not bringing mercenaries into the place, they come in on a sensible sort of salary, we don’t pay a fortune. But they’ve got to buy into the ethos. 

“And if they don’t, Leighton [Jones, the head coach] just doesn’t have any nonsense at all. He’s been instrumental in making sure that the players that we get in have the right attitude and we don’t have any prima donnas.”

As he would in business, Peter is ready for the next stage. “We’re recruiting at the moment,” he says. “We’ve got some good players for next season and we’re not going up to just try and avoid relegation. We’re going up to be competitive and try and win it. That’s sport, what’s the point otherwise? 

“This is the thing I didn’t understand when they ringfenced the Premiership,” continues Peter. “What’s the point in having a sport without jeopardy? When there’s something on the game, everybody enjoys it more – the supporters, the players, the management. If there’s nothing on it, it’s just pointless. So, we’re going to go up and hopefully be competitive, let’s see what happens.”

Pontypool beat Beddau 61-0. Four days later, they beat them again, away, 0-33, but promotion had already been secured due to Bargoed’s defeat to Ystrad Rhondda. Four years after ‘Llanelli’, they were up. Twenty-two games, twenty-two wins. Points for: 1,071; points against: 232. The one name continually dropped as pivotal to this success is “Slug”. 

As the son of Pooler front row legend Steve “Junna” Jones, head coach Leighton “Slug” Jones has always had big boots to fill in Pontypool. “I’m born and bred in Pontypool, I’ve lived here all my life,” says Leighton. “What does the club mean to me? I’ve got massive attachment, I’ve been going down there since I was six or seven. My dad played and captained the club, he then coached them, and with him being my role model in life, I wanted to follow in his footsteps. 

“I played here, underneath him, and then I captained them too, so coaching Pontypool for me, while it’s been a bit of rollercoaster, I think it’s everything I wanted to do... 

“Dad passed away when I was captain, when I was 28, and that was kind of a difficult period,” explains Leighton. “I stopped playing because of a back injury, and had some tough times. That was part of my journey though,” he says, matter-of-factly. “And I always wanted to come back to Pontypool so that I could be as successful as he was. It’s a driver for me, it keeps him closer to me, and that’s probably, at times, given me extra incentive. This is a family club, we’re all here, people from Pontypool, playing for our friends and family and Pontypool.”

Leighton, a front rower like his dad, had his career ended through the back injury. “That was when the court case happened,” he explains, helping us with the timeline. “I had two years out of rugby, I did a bit of coaching and one of my best friends was coaching Garndiffaith, and I signed up there to coach for a year. Pontypool approached me then, but I’d committed to the Garn for a year, so I did that and then went back to Pontypool.

“Pete had just taken over,” he explains of his 2013 return as forwards coach. “They’d struggled the first year and just avoided relegation.”

He worked first under head coach Mike Hook. “The goal was just to get a good team together and try and be as high up as possible,” he explains. “And in my first season we broke top four...”

Hook left to join Bridgend and was replaced by Alun Carter, who lasted six months, before 31-year-old Louie Tonkin took the reins but left after missing out on promotion just before the ringfencing began. Then, after biding his time in the backroom, it was time for Leighton to become head coach. “I spent three years as forwards coach, and then felt ready to go head coach, Pete and Ben had seen something in me, and decided I was the right man for job,” he explains. “I was very nervous, but they had faith in me. Taking on the role of Pontypool head coach, where you have a lot of family and friends associated with the club, was a huge pressure...

“Straight away, the first boys I signed with the bit of budget left, were ex-Pontypool, playing elsewhere; getting those who’d played a bit here, that I trusted and respected, to come back in, and give their all for Pontypool. I gathered about six or seven ex-players that still lived in the town, or had close ties here.”

The connection between the club and the area was key. “We were a sleeping giant, and we’d lost touch with local clubs. Pontypool had been selfish over the years, we’d only looked after ourselves. So, we stripped the club right down to rebuild this community. We worked with the local clubs and community, knowing – because of ringfencing – we had three years in the Championship. We had to re-engage everyone within the community, the people, the clubs – and that’s what we did. It was things like every Tuesday and Thursday inviting local mini and junior teams down to have a coaching session with all the injured players, and then stay and watch our sessions.”

On the pitch they started to dominate, winning the league in Leighton’s first season, albeit with no reward. Instead, motivation came from improvement. “We were in a place, we had a good squad, so the desire was just to keep getting better every month, every game, every year, then when the time came, we’d be ready. Some teams took the approach of ‘let’s not worry for two years, save money, and then spend [when the league reopened], but look at what happens in football. Teams can chuck money at a club for a year and it doesn’t bring success, you need that togetherness in team and squad, and so we looked at building year on year, keeping a core of boys that would pay dividends come that third year. 

“We have a massive desire to bring as many Pontypool people as we can into the senior team. Right now, we’ve got 36 players, and twenty of them are Pontypool born and bred. When I arrived, it was about five...

“I think a lot of people think we threw money at it,” he admits, “but we are trying to get local boys in, enjoying their rugby, playing winning rugby and enjoying themselves – that then brings their family and friends back too.

“In that first year, everything worked; players talked and that talk went around, had a snowball effect, and we had local people wanting to be part of the club. Once you come to this club you realise how special it is, how much of a buzz there is.”

The title was secured three years on the trot, albeit ‘Llanelli’, happening in the third season. 

“I suppose the play-off was a bitter pill to swallow, probably one game too far, quality opposition, unfair but it was the rules,” he admits. “I did look at myself, asking, ‘am I the right person to take the club forward?’ I questioned myself: was it time for someone new to come in? But I spoke to Peter and others, and was reassured that I was the person to deliver on promotion, to take the club where they belong.”

The rebuild happened to the ground too. “The ground was basically, the building was falling down, water hammering through and into light sockets, it wasn’t far away from being condemned,” he says. “Peter wanted to upgrade, and the fence came in because we’d have needles and human excrement and glass bottles on field, so given we wanted to bring the community and kids down here it wasn’t a safe place for anyone to be. So, we had battles with the council about the fence; some in the local community didn’t want that, but eventually everyone came to an agreement, and now everyone can use the facility.”

Living locally, Leighton knows the town has struggled. “There’s a massive difference in the town now,” he admits. “Back then there were a lot more local shops, more pubs, a market, it was a bustling town, and everything was rugby orientated. Now, it’s not a great town [centre], a lot of the shops have gone, pubs have gone, it’s nowhere near as busy as it used to be, it’s got a bit bleak to be honest.

“Over the last ten years it started, places closing down, which has a knock-on-effect with jobs and money, then the big supermarkets came in and crushed a lot of local market stalls and shops. There’s a lot of empty places now.”

But he senses regeneration. “The local council has been brilliant, trying to regenerate, they’re working on some buildings, it’s probably long overdue, but then you go down to the park, and see all the greenery and lovely scenery, you realise what a lovely place it is.”

And the rugby has played a role too. “It’s still one hundred per cent a rugby town, definitely over the last five or six years the team has generated a lot of interest, more local boys back at the club, more families and friends back, and there’s murals going up over town, shops being painted in Pontypool colours – everyone in the community is backing the club. 

“The town is getting a buzz back around it,” he continues, “there’s more Ponty clothing being worn, more talk around the town.”

He doesn’t believe it ends here, despite this leg of the journey taking more than a decade of turmoil. “I think it has got potential,” says Leighton. “When we went to the cup final, the crowd was incredible, most of the town were down there. And when we met afterwards, the pubs were full and bustling like years ago. I’ve spoken to people since, and there were a lot of ‘thank-yous’ for what we’re doing for the town, drawing the community closer together, friends rekindling their love for the game, and for older people it’s been thanks for a new bit of lease of life. From youngsters to pensioners, Pontypool rugby has helped create a massive shift in attitude for the town, bringing it close together.”

We speak to Leighton with the title secured, but with two games to go to finish the season unbeaten, against Ystrad Rhondda and Ystalyfera, both away [they duly win 29-31 and 7-83]. Only then could they celebrate. “We’ve had a lot of big games, the cup, then promotion to secure, then a week later the title to win, then it’s about the unbeaten tag, so we’ve not had time as a squad to celebrate.

“I think then it’ll sink in, what we’ve managed to do, and then I think there’ll be a lot of emotion. I lost my mother as well as my father, so I hope they’ll be looking down, proud of what we’ve done.”

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by  Richard Johnson

This extract was taken from issue 22 of Rugby.
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