This Saturday, Aberavon travel to the Arms Park to take on Cardiff in the Indigo Group Premiership, kick-off at 2:30 pm.
In the Premiership this season, Cardiff have won four of their five games so far. They started their league campaign with a narrow 25 – 27 home loss against Carmarthen Quins in early January. Since then, they have had four successive bonus-point wins with them seeing off RGC 1404 (52 – 29), Ebbw Vale (58 – 8), Bridgend (29 – 22) and, last weekend, Llanelli (22 – 5). Only the match against the Steelmen was at the Arms Park.
In the Premiership Cup, Cardiff finished second in their pool having won six of their ten games. They will face Newport in the semi-final of the competition later this month.
Looking at the Premiership, in “attack”, Cardiff have scored 37.2 points on average per game (ranked 1st) and 5.8 tries (ranked 1st). In “defence” they have conceded 16.2 points on average per game (ranked 2nd) and 2.2 tries (ranked joint 3rd). Aberavon have scored 26.0 points per game (ranked 6th) and 3.33 tries (ranked 6th), and conceded 19.7 points (ranked 3rd) and 1.7 tries (ranked 1st).
Head-to-head, Aberavon and Cardiff have met each other 38 times in the Welsh National League, with the Blue & Blacks leading the series 20 – 17 with 1 game drawn. At the Arms Park, Cardiff lead 13 – 5 with 1 game drawn and have won the last three times the sides have met at the ground.
Looking back to the 2003-04 season, the Wizards won a midweek league game at the ground 26 – 13 with prop Paul Breeze and outside half Jamie Davies scoring tries for the Wizards. Referee Paul Adams also awarded the visitors a penalty try for a collapsed scrum. Davies kicked three penalties and a conversion. For the home side, wing Jamie Henthorn scored their only try with outside half Gareth McCarthy kicking the conversion and two penalties.
The Wizards team that day was: Ricky Price; Lenny Woodard, Darren Ryan, David Hawkins, Sam Greenaway (rep Chris Perry); Jamie Davies, Daniel Hawkins; Mike Harris (rep Paul Breeze), James Jones, Greg Dix, Dafydd Owen, Chris Gittins, Dean Thomas (rep Steffan Edwards), Jonathan Purnell (rep Jamie Summers), Howard Merrett.
The referee for Saturday’s game is Adam Jones, aided by Simon Rees and Mark Butcher.