Six of the worst at Llanelli

SUNDAY saw us suffer our heaviest defeat in the WPL at the hands of Llanelli on a day which may well see us learn more lessons than from any victory this season.
Serving the second of my three-game ban I took my seat in the stand gutted that I wasn't involved. The Llanelli away was one of the first fixtures I looked for when the games were announced and I so wanted to be on the pitch when we played the champions.
Also, as I mentioned in the previous blog entry, was already in south Wales having watched the weekends Wales games so only had to travel an hour on the train instead of the five hour coach journey the lads had to go through.
At any level that sort of travelling can effect your performance. We've had two long journeys down to Port Talbot and Llanelli and have lost both times and what Llanelli highlighted was how important it is to be able to get used to travelling those distances and performing. That of course comes with experience and the players finding out what they can do to make the journeys less arduous in the future.
Soon we will travel to Haverfordwest and its vital we try and cure our away day blues.
Llanelli was going to be tough wherever we played them, a lot of people saw the game against Rhyl and wrote them off but they're champions and you don't win titles without knowing how to overcome setbacks. They started like a house on fire and 2-0 down after five minutes was a nightmare which only got worse with Bevan's red card.
I've not seen the incident on television yet and the challenge and the referee saw it as a sending off. All of a sudden you feared the worst for the lads against the full timers with a man less but as we always do, we rallied and played some decent football.
But we were playing a team with good players and a team who are very good at using the wingers and full-backs to whip crosses in for Rhys Griffiths.
The second sending off looked ridiculous, the referee seemed to be stood between Griffo and the player he was shouting at Dave Hayes and yet the referee appeared to go on the advice of his linesman. It all seemed a bit surreal because no-one knew what had happened, even our players.
But like I've said before you hope these decisions even themselves over the course of a season. Four players sent off in two games sounds a lot worse than the situation is. At the moment we're maybe suffering a little from what happened at Bala.
Referee's are maybe looking at what happened there and being more watchful of what we do, but we just have to learn to keep calm and play our football (myself included).
But that game has gone and what we need to now is learn from it an move forward to what has become a massive game on Friday. Porthmadog at home is a game we'll go into confident we can win especially with being unbeaten at home in the league and having won our previous two Friday night home games.
It's our home form which is already looking vital in picking up points and climbing the table. The away results will come I'm sure as the squad gain more experience.
We haven't been the first team to concede six goals at Llanelli and certainly won't be the last, but like when Llanelli lost 5-1 to Rhyl, people may start to question our resolve.
As a squad of players we need to rally and bounce back with a winning reply on Friday.

We do of course have a game tonight in the final group game of the League Cup at home to TNS. Hardly the most ideal fixture to face after Llanelli but with nothing to play for the opportunity is there for players to make a claim for a place on Friday and if they play as they did for periods against Connah's Quay last week, it will present the manager with a selection headache for Friday.