Friendly

Thursday 26th June 2025

Kick Off 18.30 Actual 18.38

Canton 2 Newport Saints 2, attendance 35

29’ 1-0 (pen)

36’ 1-1

77’ 1-2

85’ 2-2

@ Fitzalan High School, 3G Pitch

Leckwith Road

Cardiff

CF11 8AP

No Admission or Programme.

Another slog down the M4 for a friendly between Step 3 Canton (Ardal South East) and Step 4 Newport Saints (Gwent Premier League Premier Division) played at the neutral venue of Fitzalan High School. It’s a caged pitch, adjacent to the Cardiff International Sports Complex and although the school is in Leckwith Road, access to the pitch was via a flight of steps from the car park of Canton rugby club, in Lawrenny Road, which was open for refreshments and toilets and where I bagged the last parking space, having arrived about half an hour before kick off. Spectator access is restricted to one side of the pitch, where there are a couple of seated kit stands (dreadful view from both!), but the standing area between the two offered the best vantage point, helped by the dugouts being on the far side.

Canton took the lead just before the half hour mark, with a penalty awarded for a handball, but Newport Saints were gifted an equaliser seven minutes later, when the Canton ‘keeper played a clearance straight to a Saints forward who rolled the ball into the empty net. Saints made it 1-2 with thirteen minutes left, curling a free kick around the wall from the edge of the D, with Canton deservedly drawing level with five minutes left, when a cross from the right was finished with a downward header at the far post.

The usual roadworks hold ups on the return home, this time coming off the M4 at J14 (one junction before the hold ups were beginning), heading down to the M3 at Basingstoke, before the M25 was again shut in both directions between J10 and J9, meaning not arriving home until 23.45, despite it having been an early kick off.