Last week at Talbot Athletic Ground the home side edged it 20-16 to take valuable league points and move off the bottom to be replaced by the Black and Ambers.
The visitors looked like being blown away as the pack struggled against a strong Wizards pack but to their credit came back strongly in the second half and almost snatched the win.
The Wizards have had the upper hand in recent meetings and have won the last four matches. In the Cup the record stands even with four wins each out of eight matches played with a record of P8 W4 L4 F129 A121 to Newport.
Of the four Aberavon wins only one has been at Newport and that was back in 1981/2 when the visitors won 18-0. In fact of the eight matches only two have been played at Rodney Parade, three at Talbot Athletic and the other three on neutral grounds in semi-finals.
The last meeting in the Cup at Rodney Parade was in 2000/1 when a star studded Newport team won comfortably 56-18 running in eight tries from Alix Popham, Dale Burn, Shane Howarth, Martyn Llewellyn and Matt Mostyn (2), Emyr Lewis and Joe Powell. They went on to win the Cup for the second time in their history – captained by the great Gary Teichmann.
Newport: G ODriscoll, J Morris, D Robinson, B Nightingale, E Frewen, J Mogg, O Davies, J Greenfield, Andrew Brown, A Jeffries, Adam Brown, A Frampton, R Jenkins, O Griffiths (capt), S Cross.
Replacements : D Rogers, D Pattison, C Davies, R Gibbon, S Feehan, A Quick, O Broad, C Rees.
Aberavon:15 Morgan Williams 14 Kristian Corbisiero 13 Will Price 12 David Evans 11 Stef Andrews 10 Cameron Clement 9 Dan Davies; 1 Neil White 2 Ieuan Davies 3 Andrew Clatworthy 4 Adam Beard 5 Sam Williams 6 Rob Dudley Jones 7 Nathan Brown 8 Ben Davies
Replacements: 16 David Pritchard 17 Darren Ryan 18 Matthew Jenkins 19 Gareth Harvey 20 Chris Davies 21 Lee Purnell 22 Rowan Jenkins 23 Ryan Harford
