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It took 50 seasons of Junior Union rugby before Penallta Rugby Club finally saw its players stride onto the national stadium.

The club should’ve graced the hallowed turf ten years earlier than it did, back in 1991, with its first truly dominant Penallta side. The 1991 side,  which had reigned supreme through the 80s, was led by the magnificent Jeff ‘K9’ Davies. K9’s squad blew its chance of stadium glory by losing their 4^th round Welsh Districts Cup match in New Tredegar, playing on a surface more akin to an ice rink than a rugby field. Penallta’s President Len Hatcher, the former timekeeper at Penallta colliery and one of the founder members of the club,  was into his 70^th year by then and had watched Penallta fail in all of its previous ‘Brewers Cup’ attempts, but the failure of the class of ’91 hurt old Len the most.

Len wanted nothing more than to see his beloved Penallta win the ‘Brewers’ at the Cardiff Arms Park. Penallta was Len’s life’s work and the Brewers Cup had been the holy grail for Junior Union clubs since its inception in 1974. The reward for reaching the final was an opportunity to play on the national ground. But after Penallta’s bad times in the mid-90s, culminating in Rob Moore’s terrible injury in that fateful collapsed scrum, Penallta faced an uncertain future. As K9 and his boys left the field in New Tredegar that day, nearly frozen to death and shivering toward the end of an era for a wonderfully talented side, Len wasn’t alone in thinking his stadium dream was over.

Penallta faced down some extraordinarily difficult times in the 90s, but Len’s dream was far from over. In fact, for Penallta, the new millennium would bring unprecedented glories. Len sadly never lived to see his own dream come true. He died just one season before Penallta finally made it to the national stadium, and four seasons before Penallta achieved its long-term goal of becoming a WRU-affiliated club. But the legacy he bequeathed in his absence after six decades at Penallta’s helm was a family club with a wonderful spirit of ambition. Even in his wildest dreams Len would never have envisaged Penallta being the club it is today. Not only has Penallta recovered from the tragedy of Rob’s injury, it has become one of the leading lights of community club rugby in Wales; a Welsh colliery and village club winning as many trophies as any other club since the turn of the century.

On March 31^th 2001 Penallta finally lifted the Brewers Cup at the newly-built Millennium Stadium to realise a dream 50 years in the making. If Len’s passing ushered in a new era at Penallta, then the first visit to the national ground in 2001 kick-started an extraordinary decade in which the club rocketed through the Welsh leagues. Since that historic win, Penallta has become a rugby club synonymous with success. Gracing the national stadium was no longer a dream, for the Pitmen of the modern era, it became a calling.

On Sunday, Penallta will travel to Cardiff to play a cup final at the national stadium for an astonishing fifth time in 15 years. For a club like Penallta, which doesn’t pay players, and which has punched way above its weight for generations, it is a singularly proud achievement. After the Brewers winning side of 2001, there followed the Swalec Plate triumph of 2012. After that there was the victory in the Welsh Youth Cup in 2014 and the loss in the Youth Cup final against Pontypridd last April. An even more remarkable statistic is Penallta have now reached the national stadium an amazing three times in the last three seasons. This year they’ve renamed it the Principality Stadium, but it’s made no difference, for Penallta the Satnav is set. Supporters of the Pitmen are well and truly spoiled.

And for anybody wondering what happened in those barren years between 2001 and 2012? Well, that was the decade where Penallta won its final Junior Union league and cup doubles, before becoming a WRU-affiliated club in 2004 and winning Divisions 5E, 4E and 3E on the trot and gaining promotion the next season by finishing 2^nd in Division 2E. Amid all that was the historic win in the Silver Ball competition in 2005, when Penallta became the only club in the competition’s rich history to lift the prestigious trophy from Division 5. New to the WRU structure, Penallta were slaying all comers.

And the successes went on. Since 2012 Penallta added their second Silver Ball win, as well as winning the Division 1E title last season for the first time in its history. Meanwhile the 2^nds lifted a string of league and cup titles, the 2005/2006 team becoming the first side in Penallta history to go unbeaten for a whole season. And then there’s the Youth. Penallta’s Youth sides have won so many doubles and trebles over the last five years there is almost collective shock when they fail to win. In fact, Jack Condy’s 2014 all-conquering youth side became the only club we know of to win every single competition it entered in the 2013-2014 season, winning an incredible eight titles. What a side that was.

It’s incredible really. And for any dyed-in-the-wool Pitman, like Len, who spent time at Penallta’s crumbling old Nalgo clubhouse in the late 90s as professionalism took a grip on the sport and the future looked bleak, the turnaround in fortunes has been amazing. On the field, and in the meritocracy of the WRU league tables, Penallta is a club transformed. But where it matters, at the heart of the club, where voluntary effort, player involvement, family and friendship binds it all together, Penallta hasn’t really changed at all. It’s still a pit club with an ethos of teamwork and development; a place where kids love to play their rugby.

All of us at Penallta are as grateful for the transformation and success as Len would’ve been. At midday on Sunday, around 10 supporter’s coaches will leave Penallta Rugby Club and head to the Principality Stadium in Cardiff for a brilliant day out. The Mini and Junior sections, the Ladies Section, the two Youth squads and the fabulous Troopers will all be part of it, all travelling south to support the boys. Penallta can only retain its success by being greater than the sum of its parts, and each aspect of the club remains as important as all the others. Enjoying the national stadium experience together, as one club, is as important as what happens on the field. Having the Penallta youngsters there watching, from the Under 7s who will form the guard of honour, to the captain's young son Caleb Rowlands and nine-year-old Kiera Roberts who get to be mascots on the day, is vital. All ages will be watching together and it's what makes Penallta tick. All those starry-eyed kids know they’ll get a chance at the 1sts in the future because Penallta is a club where the dreams of a village kid can quickly transform into a glorious national stadium reality. In the modern era, it’s not a privilege enjoyed by players at many other clubs.

There will be one vital difference in Penallta’s visit to the newly-named Principality Stadium on Sunday. This time the side goes there as underdogs. On the previous four visits Penallta travelled to the Millennium Stadium as favourites, but this time Bedlinog are expected to win. Bedlinog’s form this season has been magnificent. Just one win away from taking Penallta’s Division 1E title – having beaten Penallta home and away - Bedlinog are also in the Silver Ball final, still on for an incredible hat trick. It was a hat trick Penallta fell just short of last season, crashing out in the semi-final of the Plate against Newcastle Emlyn. The league title is almost done and dusted for Bedlinog, and it’d take a minor miracle for Division 2 side Porth to beat them in the Ball, so only Penallta realistically stand in the way of a glorious treble.

Nine of Penallta’s 2016 squad played in the 2012 Plate final against Nant Conwy. The 2012 Plate winning side had a reassuring inevitability about it. Fit, defensively organised and on a hot-winning streak, they almost felt bound to win. This squad of players is different. This side is more creative and capable of cutting loose, yet it lacks the predictable reassurance of the previous squad. Competitive, yes. Favourites? No.

But is that such a bad thing? The last time Penallta travelled to a Cup final as underdogs was in 2005, to face Division 3E champions Rhydyfelin in the Silver Ball at Sardis Road. Two leagues below Rhyd, albeit as newly crowned champions, Penallta weren’t given a hope in hell. Yet, at the 50 minute mark Penallta were 40 points ahead by dint of the most ruthlessly superb performance in the club’s history. Rhyd were demolished. There was nothing predictable or even remotely under-doggish about that performance, it was just pure Penallta. Rulebooks and form guides went out the window, Penallta surprised everybody with a broad landscape of relentless attacking ambition.

It’s the spirit of performances such as that one, so breathtaking and coruscatingly brilliant in equal measure, that the class of 2016 must evoke on Sunday. Penallta will be facing a Panzer tank of a Bedlinog pack that has crushed all before it this season. It is a pack as huge as it is destructive with a defence to complement its suffocating power. But Penallta enjoyed a long era as underdogs, and the history of the club is nothing if not a tale of the past-mastering of bigger, more muscular sides before tearing them to pieces out wide.

Be it that incredible Silver Ball final against Rhyd, where young Nicky Thomas grabbed the man of the match award at loose-head prop, or the backs-to-the-walls Trefil triumph where Dale Powell ran uphill and into a headwind to score the winning try, or the unlikely first round win against the reigning champions of Wattstown in 1997 (the season, ironically, when Penallta looked destined for Brewers success until Bedlinog blew us away at home and went on to win it themselves) when the Rhondda’s craziest man Kimmy Harris lumped Gaffer square on the jaw, only for Gaffer to respond by polishing Kimmy’s bald, angry pate with the palm of his hand and announcing, “you are too old for this now, Kimmy”. Wattstown were shocked that day. Shocked that pace proved so elusive to power. As the hard-men of Wattstown held Penallta’s forwards under their iron fist, Penallta’s backs were busy scoring tries under their posts.

Penallta will need all of that underdog spirit and more on Sunday because this Bedlinog final is arguably the toughest test of the lot. But the toughest tests bring the biggest challenges and those who overcome the biggest challenges can go on to occupy the place where hope once existed, replacing it with the timeless mantle of their own heroic piece of club history. For captain Lee Rowlands and his boys on Saturday, this is their opportunity. Their chance to ensure those post-match photographs paint a picture of winning history; a portrait of another Penallta captain lifting the Plate trophy, and not one of our defeated players looking at it from afar. They players will one day come to regard these days affectionately as one of the greatest time of their lives. Especially so if they win. Those of us who won it for the first time in 2001 know that for sure. The memories gain distance over time but the sweetness of the victory, the knowledge that you came, saw and conquered, that's the immortal stuff; the implacable history that will prevail forever. Rowley and the boys have their chance to weave a new piece of Penallta history for themselves on Sunday. It is an enormous privilege to be able to do so.

It’ll be tough, no doubt. But then Len Hatcher and his fellow founding members, along with the existing life members – Graham Munkley, Alan Lintern, Lee Acreman and Clive Jones, who will all be there on Sunday,  saw off bigger adversity in their day to ensure the survival of our colliery club. The efforts people like Len made back then just to keep the side on the field each Saturday lay the foundations for the wall of success Penallta is building for itself today. Penallta has grown up and moved out of its decrepit old clubhouses, shed its nomadic formative years and settled down to achieving wonderful things in life. Hopefully the founding fathers are being paid back handsomely by the players of today.

The surroundings this Sunday will be a little more salubrious than they once were, but the Penallta folk are gettting used to it. Nalgo or North Stand, it’ll be the same old Penallta. Proud, happy and together. From the Pithead to the Principality Stadium, with another shot at a glorious trophy; another great day in the life of our special rugby club. 

Good luck boys and wear that badge with a huge amount of pride.