Jason Strange’s side is now one game away from adding the Premiership crown to their recent haul of two successive Division 1 East titles followed by two SSE SWALEC Championship victories.
Standing between the Steelmen and their greatest moment of glory since they won the Western Mail Unofficial Welsh Championship in 1960 will be reigning champions Pontypridd, who will also have home advantage for Sunday’s’ Principality Premiership Final (4pm).
Having lost their grip on the SSE SWALEC Cup against Bridgend, Dafydd Lockyer’s side won’t want to loosen their three year grip on the top title in Welsh club rugby. Ponty have lost only twice this season in domestic competition, once in the Premiership to Bridgend and then in cup final to the same opposition, and will go into the game as favourites.
But Strange, one of the most rapidly developing and successful young coaches in the country, simply can’t wait to test out his side’s qualities against the team against which he has ‘bench-marked’ Ebbw Vale’s progress ever since they were relegated from the top-flight in 2010.
“Every time we’ve played Ponty we’ve come away learning lessons and I would like to think that if we did get to that stage, past experience may give us something,” Strange told Andrew Deering in an interview for the Ebbw Vale website.
“For the last five seasons I’ve looked at Ponty as the bench mark. One advantage they’ve had over us in that time is the fact they’ve been playing in the British & Irish Cup against good opposition, which has allowed the club to grow on and off the field.
“They’ve managed to grow their support base and financially they do well out of it. Having played against and beaten the likes of Toulouse and Toulon here at Eugene Cross Park as a player, that has been my vision for us after five years.
“To get to play the likes of Bristol and Worcester would be fantastic for us and hopefully we can achieve that next season. It has been a massive achievement to just get this far and I don’t think anyone at the start of the season, apart from two or three of us, would have said we would finish in the top three.
“To finish in the play-off positions is fantastic and getting through to the Premiership Final is simply something else. We’ve built a winning mentality over the past four and a half years and we managed to retain the nucleus of our squad to take into the Premiership.
“I knew that if we started the season really well we would gain a lot of confidence. We did and that confidence has slowly gathered momentum throughout the season.
“One thing we learned after our move up from the Championship to the Premiership is that you always have to produce a performance, which was something that we perhaps didn’t always have to do before.
“We’ve learned from our experiences in the cup and the bigger games that you can’t worry too much about the opposition at this stage of the season. We know enough about our game and what we need to do well in the big games.
“It’s about getting the basics right and looking after ourselves. If we can do that, more often than not, we’ll come out with the right result.”
The boots of Iain Smerdon and Carl Meyer accounted for 17 of Ebbw Vale’s points against Cross Keys and there were tries from Tom James and John Lavender to seal the deal. Now it is on to ultimate test against the reigning champions.
The two teams have met three times already this season with Ponty winning all three. They triumphed 27-19 in the league and 27-10 in the cup at Eugene Cross Park and were 27-0 winners in the return league fixtures at Sardis Road.
Will it be a fourth win and a fourth successive Premiership title for Pontypridd? It is going to be a fascinating contest.
Sunday’s final will be televised by S4C.
