When football folk come to rake over the ashes of the current season they could well point to last weekend as the moment that Barry Town were crowned Champions for the third successive season.
While the Dragons were beating the Bluebirdds of Caersws 2-0 with first half goals from Gary Lloyd and Eifion Williams, all those with championship pretensions failed to win. Inter, Cwmbran and Rhyl lost, while Bangor and Ebbw Vale were held by relegation threatened teams.
Barry now have a 14 point lead and it is difficult to see the Town, who have not lost a league game this season, dropping that many points during the remaining 16 league matches.
Just 48 hours before the Barry game, Caersws' Recreation Ground, situated on the banks of the River Severn, was under several inches of water after the river had burst its banks.
While the Caersws ground staff had worked hard to ensure that the game would go ahead - in horse racing terms the going would have been described as heavy - the Caersws players for all of their endeavour and commitment could not hold back the Barry deluge which swept towards them. Only one man stood between Barry and running up the kind of scores they have recently been inflicting on the likes of Conwy (9-0) and Welshpool (8-0).
Matthew Griffiths, the Caersws goalkeeper, was in outstanding form, denying Richard Jones with a full-length save low to his left, and prevented a possible first-half hat-trick for Eifion Williams.
His heroic display in stopping wave after wave of Barry attack was undermined when he brought down Darren Ryan for a penalty. Gary Lloyd scored from the spot.
Twice Griffiths saved from Eifion Williams with one save having to be cleared off the line with the ball spinning towards the goal after a fine reaction block. But Williams was not to be denied and just before half-time after good work down the right between Darren Ryan and Danny Carter, playing further forward than in recent games, Williams slid in on Carter's low cross to force the ball over the line.
Bizarrely, that was the end of the scoring. In an even more competitive second half Darren Ryan skipped past Griffiths so often that the Caersws 'keeper must have felt like a traffic bollard in the middle of a motorway. Ryan had a shot cleared off the line, as did Gary Barnett. Williams went close onnumerous occasions, as the attacking trio of Carter, Ryan and Williams, ably supported by Richard Jones, Lloyd and Terry Evans, ran the Caersws defence ragged. Only luck and tenacity prevented Barry from scoring five or more goals in a league match for the sixth time this season.
League of Wales match report: Caersws v Barry Town, 10th January, 1998
First published in the Barry Gem, 15.01.98. Written by Stephen Johnson.
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