Gwent Premier League
League Cup 2nd Round
Wednesday 2nd September 2026
Kick Off 18.15 Actual 18.19
Marshfield 4 Pontnewydd United 2, attendance 33
13’ 1-0
28’ 1-1
30’ 2-1
53’ 2-2 (pen)
57’ 3-2
90’ + 2, 4-2
@ Marshfield Village Hall
Wellfield Road
Marshfield
CF3 2UB
No Admission or Programme.
A second successive night heading west to Gwent and another game in the League Cup of the Gwent Premier League, where Premier Division were hosting Division 1. Marshfield is south of the M4, roughly midway between Newport and Cardiff. The club play at The Village Hall, where there’s a small car park as you enter off Wellfield Road. The changing rooms are to the left, with the pitch in front, running lengthways away from the building. It’s railed off and has a pair of dugouts on the left hand touchline. On arrival, it soon became apparent there were no pitch markings, or very feint ones at best. Luckily a club volunteer had been up to the ground this morning, and having noticed the problem, had ordered a line marking machine from Amazon (which was delivered within a couple of hours!) and was busily constructing it behind the near goal about forty five minutes prior to the scheduled kick off. Thankfully, we had a very sensible referee. He was happy to play the game….”just mark the outside lines and we’ll be okay. If there’s a foul/handball I’ll award the free kick and judge whether it’s in the box or not afterwards”. The job was duly done, including a few other sections, before the paint ran out and the game got underway just four minutes behind schedule.
Marshfield had an opportunity to take the lead after five minutes, but missed a penalty, easily saved by the ‘keeper. They made the breakthrough eight minutes later though, when a ball over the top was taken around the ‘keeper and rolled into the empty net. Pontnewydd levelled just before the half hour mark, when a cross from the right was finished low into the bottom corner. They were only level for two minutes, before a pull back from the right was smashed high into the net from ten yards to put Marshfield 2-1 up. A couple of minutes before halftime Marshfield were awarded their second penalty of the match, but missed again, this time firing over the crossbar. Eight minutes into the second half we had penalty number three, this time for Pontnewydd, which was duly dispatched to make it 2-2. Marshfield regained the lead just before the hour mark, scoring after a corner wasn’t cleared from the box. With eight minutes left, Marshfield were awarded their third penalty of the night and just like the first two they’d had, it was missed, another one hit over the crossbar! They finally killed off the game in stoppage time, when a corner was cleared to the edge of the area and smashed back through the crowded box and into the net to make it 4-2, so at least we didn’t have to worry about a penalty shootout and the final whistle sounded at 20.03, with the light starting to fade. So, that now completes the top division of this league for me and leaves just three more for the entire league.
The journey to Wales saw the usual hold ups on the M25 and then the M4 just north of Bristol and the standard queuing into the Brynglas Tunnels near Newport. At least there were no roadworks coming home.
