ABERYSTWYTH could take plenty of heart from their determined performance as they made unbeaten Division One West frontrunners Felinfoel work very hard for a narrow 16-15 win at Plascrug.

Although Aber out-scored the visitors by two tries to one, they were too generous with penalties, and Felinfoel’s kicker Aled Roberts took full advantage of it.

This was to prove the difference between the two sides at the final whistle.

Felinfoel kicked-off and Aber, with an aimless clearance kick, immediately returned possession to them. For the first 30 minutes the visitors were camped in Aber’s half, and retained possession well.

During this period it was only Aberystwyth’s stonewall defence that prevented the league leaders from scoring a try, as, to a man, they tackled well and pressured better than they have done all season.

On the half hour mark, entirely against the run of play, Ian Ellis on Aber’s left wing, intercepted a pass on his 22 metre line and raced to score under the posts. Llyr Thomas then converted for 7-0 lead.

Confusion among the home forwards in fielding the ball from the kick-off gave the visitors another opportunity to regain possession and make ground. Again they pressed hard on the home line, kept the ball and made Aber’s defence work hard.

Felinfoel’s try came from a scrum 15 metres from Aber’s line. The ball was fed out to outside half Roberts, who broke through the first line of defence and fed inside centre Josh Edwards, who went over near the posts. Roberts’ conversion brought the scores even again at 7-7.

There followed an exchange of penalty kicks between Llyr Thomas for the home side, and Roberts for the visitors, to level the scores again at 10-10 at half-time.

Aber had made life difficult for themselves in the first half by keeping the ball too tight. Centres Hughes and Evans, with wingers Ellis and Coulton outside of them, had shown that they were a real threat on the rare occasions they got ball.

Also, far too many of the home side’s clearance kicks from defence had failed to find touch, which enabled Felinfoel to counter-attack purposefully from deep.

The penalty count was high on both sides, with the difference being that Felinfoel were able to kick theirs from striking distances, whereas Aber were usually too far from the posts for their efforts to be kickable. Felinfoel’s outside half Roberts not only scored with every kick at goal, he also controlled the game very well with his precise kicking from hand.

On the stroke of half-time an injury had forced Aber’s Lee Gower off the field injured, to be replaced by Lewis Ellis-Jones. His fresh and tireless work led the way for the hosts’ tiring forwards to follow.

Felinfoel though kept the pressure on Aber, setting up phase after phase, launching attacks and creating opportunities. Again it was only the home side’s relentless defending that kept them out.

Felinfoel again forced Aber back and gained a penalty, which Roberts converted to put the visitors ahead for the first time in the match, with score at 10-13.

This, however, was short-lived as Aber returned the pressure and a fine 35 metre jinking run down the right touchline saw James Coulton score a try in the corner. Crucially, the difficult conversion failed, but Aber were back in front at 15-13.

Aber’s glory was short-lived as Felinfoel sealed victory with a 20 metre penalty when an Aber scrum was in retreat and the ball was handled on the ground.

The final scoreline reflected what a very close contest this was, but Felinfoel will wonder how they came so close to losing the match, after winning so much possession and holding so much territory.

The reason was that they couldn’t penetrate Aber’s resolute and excellent defence. Their tackling wasn’t pretty, and not technically sound, but the tacklers stopped the ball carriers time and again, and that was all that was asked of them.

Up front, with Arwel Lloyd and Bryn Shepherd missing, Aber’s scrum was under pressure throughout, and they gave away a few penalties as a result of this.

For the second week running, their line-out work was again weak and, despite good work by Dan Binks and Lewis Ellis-Jones, misguided tapping of the ball back to an inexperienced scrum half did not help their cause. But in the loose, the pack were energetic and they made life difficult for their determined opponents.

Behind the scrum Aber’s backs rarely saw the ball going forward, and so were unable to gain any momentum in attack. When they were able to do so, they looked more threatening than their opponents. But, ultimately, this was a case of what might have been for Aberystwyth.