Garden Village progressed into the last 16 of the Shamrock Travel Cup on Saturday at the expense of Second Division rivals Pontyclun thanks to a late David Evans header.

The defender got himself on the end of a Dayle Selvage corner 5 minutes from time to convert one of many chances that fell Village’s way. Pontyclun ‘keeper Rhys Davies kept his side in the tie with a string of fine saves throughout, but Mark Snell needed to make an excellent save in injury-time to deny the visitors a last-gasp equaliser.

Village were on the attack as early as the sixth minute when David Rimmer had a header cleared off the line, and on 10 minutes Derrick Jenkins had a goal ruled out for offside. Jenkins again came really close to scoring soon afterwards with a header 6-yards from goal but Rhys Davies did extremely well to push it away.

Craig Blake had his shot cleared off the line on the half-hour mark from Derrick Jenkins’ knock-down – the home side finding it extremely hard to breach ‘Clun’s defence so it remained scoreless as the tie went into half-time.

Half-time: Garden Village 0 – 0 Pontyclun

David Rimmer came close to scoring 6 minutes into the first-half but 6 minutes into the second period of play he did have the ball in the back of the net, but it was ruled out by referee Garwyn Davies for a foul on a Pontyclun player.

Pontyclun’s young goalkeeper Davies was by far the busiest of the two ‘keepers on the afternoon and he kept up his fine form with an excellent save from a thunderous Steven Evans strike on 62 minutes which he pushed over the top, and 11 minutes from time Evans tested him again with another fine strike which was tipped just over.

The fairly large crowd present had to wait until the very end to see the decisive goal that would end up seeing Village through to the third round of the League Cup, and the player that scored it, David Evans, didn’t seem to know much about it! Dayle Selvage had been putting some excellent balls into the box all afternoon and when somebody (Dai Evans) finally got on the end of one of them and put it beyond Pontyclun’s inspirational goalkeeper, it went in off the back of his head!