Cefn Druids 2 Alport 0
Despite suffering their first defeat of pre-season, Alport took plenty of positives away from The Rock. Two second half goals gave the Welsh Premier League side the spoils in a terrific game of football played on a superb 3G pitch. But Alport played their part and had a number of chances to perhaps have earned another highly creditable draw. The Reds management team had purposely set a gruelling pre-season schedule, and after a 3-1 victory away at Airbus and a home draw with Altrincham, there are already early signs that Whitchurch will be amongst the frontrunners when the league campaign gets underway on August 12th. 
 
There was an early setback on the Welsh border when player coach and summer signing Ben Mills had to go off with a tight hamstring, suffered during the pre-match warm-up. Alport had by that time already survived a huge scare when somehow Rob Cooke managed to divert Mike Pritchard’s diving header wide of the post. But Mills was involved in a decent chance for the away side when he muscled his way past a few defenders to pull back a terrific ball from the by-line. Cefn defended it but only just with both Luke Walley and Si Everall unlucky that the partial clearance didn’t fall right for them.
 
Despite spending a fair chunk of the first 20 minutes on the back foot, the game then became far more of an even contest and Everall almost put Alport in front only for Mike Jones to make the save. Former Shrewsbury and Wrexham defender Neil Ashton curled a free kick narrowly wide for Druids and Nick Marley saw an audacious attempt land on top of the netting.
 
Cooke made another fine stop to concede a corner in the opening seconds of the second half, and before the ball went dead a scuffed shot from Lewis Buckley trickled over the line to put the hosts one up. On the hour Jones spectacularly turned over Everall’s rising drive at his near post and there was warm applause from the travelling supporters when Mike Blundell was introduced with 15 minutes left. Last season’s top goalscorer hadn’t played since limping out of the Easter Monday clash against Litherland but shortly after he saw his free-kick gathered by Jones, Cefn wrapped the game up. Ellis Healing saw his cross C*M shot elude the grasp of young substitute keeper Cameron Phelps and bounce in at the far post. Phelps might have done better with that one but made amends with a smashing stop to prevent a third for Cefn. That would have been massively harsh on an Alport side that had gone toe-to-toe with a very good home team.