"WE WANT to get into the top four in this league and playing this way we will," declared a jubilant Greg Woods, Keys assistant coach, in the changing-rooms at the end of this hard-won victory at Pandy Park.

He added: "We challenged our players to come up with a result like this and they dug deep to achieve it."

Woods was referring to the fact that his side finished the match two short, having skipper Ben Watkins and outstanding no 8 James Malpas yellow-carded in the final quarter, joined in the sin bin by Scott Mitchell and by Wanderers' Keith Stewart, a former Pandy Park favourite.

But they got off to a fine start despite weather conditions that had locals declaring that they had not seen anything like it in 50 years.

Thunder and lightning were suddenly joined by driving sleet and hailstones, producing a "white-out" that quickly caused three motoring incidents on local roads and held up referee Hugh Watkins on his way to the ground.

Play, in fact, was able to start on time but the pitch was in heavy condition, with large areas holding surface water and a great deal of mud on the remainder.

Nevertheless, players on both sides made light of such conditions in the early stages.

Full marks to Keys, in particular, for posting a splendid try from hooker Rhys Miller in only the second minute of play.

Leon Andrews added the conversion points and followed up with two well-struck penalties to build a match-winning 13-nil cushion.

Wanderers struck back through Simon Rosser when their acting skipper, Harry Trelawny, hoisted the ball over a retreating defence and managed to reduce the lead with the only score of the second half, a penalty from Gareth Williams-Davies.

What made life particularly exciting was the sin-binning that had Keys down to 13 men against 14 in the last stages of the game.

It was to the credit of the Keys' squad, including the six replacements who came on, that they held on to their lead against a team four places above them in the league in order to record their seventh league win of the season.

Cross Keys: L Andrews; G Williams, L Humphreys (R James, 69), D Dark, J Leadbetter (S Snedden, 12); S Mitchell, O Jones; B Fisher, R Miller (L Burns, 44), C Gould (D Preece, 44), M Curtis (A Sweet, 56), B Watkins (capt), G Gladwyn, T Lampard (S Rabuli, 64), J Malpas.

Try: R Miller; con: L Andrews; pens: L Andrews (2).

Glam W: G Morris; S Cullen, S Rosser, A James, J Jones; G Williams-Davies, H Trelawny (capt) (L Williams, 64); M O'Leary (M Llewellyn, 58), H Dowden (R Emms, 72), A Murphy, G Knight (A Luff, 61), K Stewart, N Kelly, B Rose, R Thomas (M Grimes, 72).

Try: S Rosser; pen: G Williams-Davies.

Referee: Hugh Watkins (WRU).