by Jack Cook
UNIVERSITY of South Wales Men’s 3rd turn their attention to cup action this week as they face Swansea University 3rd.
After an impressive start to the season USW travel to Swansea who, by contrast haven’t started poorly.
USW are currently top of the table and unbeaten in the Western Tier 4, with an opening day win against Bristol 5th. Victory last week against Cardiff 4th means that they will be going into this cup tie full of confidence.
Swansea are currently winless in their opening two games. This won’t be the first time that Swansea have encountered a USW side this season, after losing on the opening day to USW 2nd. Last week they lost to Bristol 4th, USW 3rd’s promotion rivals last campaign.
Despite Swansea coming into this game winless, they will be the favourites as they are a league above USW 3.
USW’s coach Rob Bailey said: “I am looking forward to building on a solid start that has plenty of scope for improvement. I have a strong squad in which all players can rightly consider themselves starters and every time we are together the quality rises a little higher.
“I am looking for the players to put in a consistent level of performance as opposed to thinking about cup runs or league titles – with a squad that has as much potential as this one I am more than happy to focus on performance levels and let everything else take care of itself. I am trying to ensure we develop good habits.
“It will certainly be a good test against higher opposition. If we do well it should further improve confidence levels in the squad but I prefer to focus on us and our performance level rather than be concerned about the opposition. As long as the players give me their best performance I will be happy – win or lose!
“Sounds daft but a narrow loss against a team two divisions higher than us kick started our season last year.”
Kick off at Fairwater is 14:00.
