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Second Place Should Not Be Difficult |
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Written by SKiNFreak
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Wednesday, 01 February 2006 |
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Page 2 of 2 Looking at the hotly contested 2nd to 4th positions on the table actually fills me with a lot of hope. Why you ask? Pontypridd have had a few iffy performances over the season, but we have consistently managed to win a lot of tough games. But we have other advantages...
Neath are the undisputed kings of the table, but that could very well be a good thing for Pontypridd. Neath dominance could give Pontypridd some breathing space and slot us safely into 2nd place. Bridgend and Aberavon have not yet faced each other this season. Their first test will come this Friday (3rd February, 2006) when the Wizards go to Brewery Field. The final match is the last of the season and from this I derive that either Bridgend will win both (for some reason BBC.co.uk has both matches occurring at Brewery field), or it will go one a piece.
Now if both teams win all other matches for the rest of the season, barring Neath, that will put Aberavon on 8 wins, and 66 points total, and Bridgend on 7 wins with 66 points also.
Pontypridd's main advantage is that they have faced Neath and Aberavon twice already (won and lost on both cases), and faced Bridgend once. So if we take this logic forward, we can assume that Pontypridd will win the next 9 matches, and lose once to either Llanelli or Newport away (being realistic of course!) and beat Bridgend at home. This will give us a total of 69 points at the end of the season. If Bridgend win both Aberavon encounters, however, the Ravens will be even pegged with Pontypridd, but either team cannot match Pontypridd on try count, so once again, 2nd place is within our grasp. This, I see as the worst case scenario.
So what is the best case scenario then? Well, if we don't give Aberavon or Bridgend the benefit of the doubt, they both could drop at least one, maybe two, games to either Llanelli, Newport or Cross Keys. This means that there could be at least another 3 point gap between second and third/fourth place with Llanelli coming into contention which will be their primary goal now that the Konica Minolta Cup has gone walkies for them. Additionally, if Pontypridd do not losefor the rest of the season, the dizzy heights of 72 points could be on the cards.
There is a wildcard in this whole argument though, and that lies with Neath. If they drop the ball (no pun intended), they could lose to Aberavon at home, and that would scupper Pontypridd's 2nd place hopes and bring us into the worst case scenario again. But you never can tell, can you? And chances are, those sneaky Blacks will manage to scrape through and get the all important wins as long as Hook stays on form. So the TeamPonty prediction table for the end of the season looks like this: | osition | Team | Points | | 1) | Neath | 80 | | 2) | Pontypridd | 69 | | 3) | Aberavon | 66 | | 4) ... | Bridgend | 66 | | 16) | Cardiff | 18 |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 03 February 2006 )
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