Jones booked a holiday with his parents and girlfriend well before Dinas made the final, so rather than miss out or have to change the dates he flew out with them all to Spain on Thursday morning, took a flight home Friday evening and will be running out onto the hallowed turf at 11.00am on Saturday morning (6 April).
He will then take a return flight to rejoin his family on Sunday morning to continue his holiday – hopefully sporting a winners’ medal!
Unbeaten in league and cup this season, they extended their lead at the top of the Division 5 East Central table with a 64-5 win at Sully Sports last weekend to clinch the title with four games left to play. In the cup, they had a couple of walk-overs in the early rounds before beating Rhigos 29-28 and then pipping Cwmtwrch 19-18 in a tense semi-final.
With almost 700 tickets for the final sold though the club alone there is going to be a big turn-out for the village side. With Rhigos and Cwmtwrch both coming from the same league as their cup final opponents Seven Sisters, head coach John Dunleavy knows what to expect on the big day. Rhigos are the only team to have beaten Seven in the league this season.
“Like Seven Sisters, we took the decision to drop down from Division 1 East Central to Division 5 this season. We just lost so many of our forwards that we felt we simply couldn’t compete any more at the top level,” admitted Dunleavy.
“A couple of the clubs we’ve met this season have been resentful of the fact we are play in Division 5, but we had to fit in somewhere. We are rebuilding out team and so many of the side have come through our junior ranks.
“The average age of our team is around 23 and we’ve got a couple of home-grown teenagers in the back division. We had no idea how this season was going to go, but we’ve been pleased with results to date.”
Division 3 East Central champions in 2015, and then Division 2 winners in 2018, Dinas enjoyed a steady rise up the ranks to reach the top-flight. Then came the hard times when their squad disbanded.
Now, with almost 90% of the team hacing graduated through their junior youth ranks, they are back on track. Their only defeat this season, 40-24, came in the Silver Ball quarter-final against Division 3 West Central leaders Abercrave, who reached the final by beating Division 1 finalists Glynneath last week.
“We had to do what we did to survive. It was a case of self-preservation,” admits Dunleavy, whose son Josh captains the side from hooker and helps to coach the forwards.
“We had a number of players come up from our youth team this season and others returned after six or seven years away from the club. The players have really committed themselves to the cause and if we hadn’t have done what we did I don’t think we would have been here.”
Determining which of these two teams goes into the final as the favourite is a tricky task, but Dunleavy senior knows exactly how to approach the role of underdog in a cup tie. He played in the biggest upset in Welsh cup history when he was part of the St Peter’s side that beat Cardiff 16-14 at the Arms Park in 1993.
