SINCE Christmas, things have gone massively wrong at Pontypool RFC.

A lot of lives have been badly affected, including mine. All I have ever wanted to do is coach the side.

A lot of the trouble has revolved around Bob Jude not being willing to speak to the players. If we had had a meeting a month or two after Christmas, we could have resolved a lot of problems.

But that didn't happen and many of the players were not being paid, good players like Byron Hayward and Lenny Woodard.

Some of them had their mortgages on the line.

Nobody knew who they would be playing for or what they would be playing for next season. Bob's company (Pontypool Premier Rugby Ltd) had a winding-up order on it and nobody was able to sign a contract.

As a result, all the players were suspicious of what was going to happen, and those that got offers from other clubs took them.

I hope all the players who have stayed - and most of them are Pontypool boys - can pull together for the people of the town because they have supported us well.

At the moment the new group that I'm part of can't offer contracts to the players who have stuck it out because we haven't been officially approved by the Welsh Rugby Union.

The despicable thing that is happening at the moment with our players - and WRU should look at it - is that other sides are tapping them up.

Other teams in our area are saying that our players will have to leave here if they want a chance.

Most of our players are under 25 and these other clubs are saying that they have got to play for them or they won't have a look-in in Gwent.

They're not offering better coaching or more money, they're just taking advantage of the situation at Pontypool.

I just hope the boys can stick it out for a bit longer. It is going to be a hard time, but then I have been asked to do this for the club and the town and I've stuck it out. It's been hard work and it's going to get even harder.

I have pulled in quite a number of the younger boys who had left and hopefully they will sign for us. We have got a cracking coach in Derek Parry, who is running the youth side that we have set up again.

Derek has coached most of the youth boys at Ebbw Vale, and the likes of Iestyn Thomas. We have got to concentrate on developing young players from our own youth systems from now on.

In the past this has been ignored and benefactors have got to stop doing that.

Putting the emphasis on youth is the only positive way forward for any valleys club.

Now we're four weeks away from the start of the season and, quite rightly, people are asking what's going to happen here.

What I can say is that the new group will run Pontypool RFC for the benefit of the players and supporters.

Nobody is putting vast sums of money in, we have just got the money from the supporters and whatever little bit of sponsorship we can get.

The club will be run in an open way and with plenty of common sense.

But it will be an uphill struggle, partly because of the poison being put out by other clubs in the the area and partly because this problem has been allowed to run on.

The way to push Pontypool forward now is for more sponsors to come in.

But I know they are not going to spend vast sums of money and that's why we have to look from within and develop our own players.

I just hope to God that all the Pontypool boys who are here stick it out for another year because, without them, we are in trouble.

Every other player, other than the Pontypool boys, have left because they have been offered more money and we couldn't offer them a contract. That's the sad part about it.

As a Pontypool boy, I'm disappointed that it's all been allowed to drag on for so long. But now we have to look to the future.

Steve Jones was speaking to Gary Baker