Candy is left with a bitter taste

Nov 6 2007 by Anthony Woolford, South Wales Echo

NELSON secretary Alen Candy has been 19 years in that job for his club and must have thought he had seen it all.

But this season the club has received successive walkovers in the Konica Minolta Cup’s preliminary and first rounds as first Trefil and then Talywain failed to appear.

“Disappointing to say the least,” said Candy.

“We had sponsors for the matches and for Talywain we had Scrum Five up here with Rick O’Shea, only to find the Gwent club had scratched.

“Instead the TV boys stayed and filmed our young under-10 and under-12 mini sides playing, but it was annoying.

“We heard that Trefil will have £500 deducted from next season’s grant and have to pay us compensation of £100, but what is that, as we lost more than that on the day.”

Nelson, nicknamed The Unicorns, are still a young club, formed in 1934, and have two senior sides and a youth team as well as several mini teams.

Candy went down from Nelson to play for Pontypridd in the early ’70s as they moved from Ynysangharad Park to Sardis Road.

But, he later returned to play wing for Nelson and now his son Matthew is a lock for the club.

Also locking is English-born skipper Chris Bax, a former Royal Navy man.

A former captain and forward, Lee Marsh, became team manager after suffering injury and the current coaches Dilwyn Jones and Paul Barnes are also former players.

Steve James brought great joy to the club at Ilfley Road, Oxford in 1981, when he came on to replace Jeremy Evans of Pontarddulais in the Wales Youth pack against England Colts.

Though the Youth had Mark Ring at fly-half and Glen Webbe on the wing, they lost 13-10. James later skippered Cross Keys in their Centenary season and led them against Fiji. He scored 22 tries in 119 games before coaching at Maesteg.

The next cap was won by scrum-half Vernon Jenkins, when he appeared for Wales Districts against Sweden in 1990 and again the following year, when he scored a try.

Jenkins was still playing last season, despite being well into his 40s and his efforts in over 500 games for Nelson has seen him being made a life member of the club.

Nelson had a good cup year in 1994-95 as they beat Bangor Normal College 105-0, Newport Saracens 24-3, Cardigan 19-7, Fleur-de-Lys 5-0 in extra time and then only losing 20-0 to Newbridge.

Mike Kelleher scored 26 points in the Bangor match and hooker Will Griffiths snapped up the try to beat Fleur.

In 2000 came another good cup run, defeating Canton 29-0, Lampeter 20-11, Gwernyfed 41-25, Narberth 21-20 and Tenby 25-19 before losing to Pontypridd.

“We beat Narberth then,” said added Candy. “But they will be a tough team for us in round two of the cup this season on their own ground.

There was rugby at Nelson in the 1880s on an ‘engine’ field, adjacent to a large farmhouse that the colliery manager lived in. But it was not until 1934 that a bunch of local grammar schoolboys came together. The first-ever game was lost 32-0 to Rhydyfelin and in 1937 after strike disputes of miners grew, the club was disbanded for a while.

It led Tom Roberts to go to Cardiff and play 31 matches before war intervened.

Nelson were probationary members of the WRU in 1961 and full members in 1965. For the Unicorns now, the only way is up and they will certainly not be scratching from the cup.

echo.sport@mediawales.co.uk