Neath Team Manager Martyn Morris has re-affirmed how important the pre-Christmas period is to the Welsh All Blacks saying, “The Maesteg and Cardiff games are very important to us – challenging fixtures outside the League confines.”

Following Wednesday’s Foster’s Cup victory over Cardiff, he said, “Our team is evolving and the win was valuable. We had a poor performance up at Llandovery in our last game, so it was important to set that right.

“We played quite well to score six tries in testing conditions and we created more chances too. Unfortunately, we shipped more points than I would have liked, but generally speaking it was a good team performance.

“Our scrum is an offensive weapon that sometimes doesn’t get what it deserves, but it’s capable of causing problems for teams in most games. It showed that again against Cardiff and we;ll keep working on it.

“We are a developing team and, with nearly a month between league games, these three fixtures against Cardiff twice and Maesteg give us the opportunity to try one or two combinations ahead of settling down to prepare for holiday league games against Aberavon (Boxing Day) and Carmarthen Quins (New Year’s Eve).

“Maesteg is the next step and a big opportunity for a couple of youngsters to show what they can do and fit in with what we are trying to achieve – then it’s back to Cardiff where we need another win to speed our development.”