There are times in all sports when – as a team – you just have to hold up your hands and say: ‘Fair play, on the day, they were way better than we were.’
Presteigne St Andrews FAW Trophy second-round tie against Caersws on Saturday, 14 September was one such occasion as the visitors ran out comfortable 12-0 winners.
While Presteigne started the game quite brightly, as the scoreline would suggest, there was a major gulf in class over the 90 minutes and so our Trophy campaign hit the buffers at the first time of asking.
In truth, this was always going to be a tough tie against a Caersws side that has played Cymru Alliance football in recent years.
While it is, perhaps, easy to be magnanimous when you have scored 12 goals in a game, it was good to see Caersws praising our largely young side for sticking to their principles and continuing to try to play football throughout.
We have all seen instances in the past that, when a team is on the wrong end of a heavy defeat, some players resort to trying to kick lumps out of the opponents but, to their credit, this didn’t happen.
A day when the squad probably needed to put that one behind them quickly and move on.
Churchstoke will be at Llanandras Park on Thursday, 19 September and this is likely to be a more realistic challenge – still tough, but more realistic.
That home game against Churchstoke will kick off at 7.30pm on Thursday evening and the admission prices will be the usual £3.00 for adults; £1.50 for senior citizens and £1.00 for youngsters under the age of 16.