We bowed out of the League Cup against Third Division Pontyclun who thoroughly deserved their win. They bossed the game and our youngsters couldn’t make much impression against a quite physical side. With Owen Williams and Craig Jones missing from last week’s back three, Kieran Parsons and Carl Evans stepped in, neither has played much football this year.

In the first five minutes Luke Evans could have given us the lead but he chose to pass rather than shoot and the chance of an early lead to settle us down had gone. Pontyclun attacked down their left and they took the lead on 19 minutes when their winger outstripped Kieran and crossed for their striker to score with ease. Rory McCreesh made a fine save diving to his right to deny the home side a second and we had a decent spell after this with Luke Evans setting up a chance for Sacha Walters whose shot from the edge of the area was turned behind by the keeper for a corner.

Early in the second half Noah Daley had a run at goal and the keeper failed to hold his shot but was able to recover before anyone could take advantage. We went two down on 69 minutes when a hopeful cross wasn’t dealt with properly giving Pontyclun a second chance to cross the ball in and this time they made no mistake to double their lead. Pontyclun scored a third on 81 minutes and they coasted the final minutes to earn a place in round 3.

Lido side

Rory McCreesh  2 Luke Evans  3 Callum Lewis  4 Carl Evans  5 Lewis Holmes  6 Kieran Parsons  7 Jamie Karnsang  8 Josh Doyle  9 Noah Daley  10 Jack Hurley  11 Sacha Walters

Subs  12 Toby Link-Jones for Carl Evans 87  14 Morgan Freeman for Jamie Karnsang 56

15   Azeem Arshad for Noah Daley 79  GK Gareth Couch