Osian Pryce and Matt Edwards are embroiled in a close fight for this year’s British Rally Championship title, with the advantage swinging from one driver to the other after each round. And that’s good news for Melvyn Evans Motorsport, who run both Volkswagen Polo GTI R5 cars for the battling stable-mates, as it attempts to win the BRC Teams’ trophy. Pryce, from Machynlleth, and Edwards, from Colwyn Bay, finished third and fourth respectively on the opening round of the series, the Neil Howard Stages at Oulton Park.

Holly Bradshaw returned ‘home’ to Wales to celebrate her Olympic Games bronze medal winning performance on Sunday. On the day a huge welcome home party for Great Britain’s Olympic heroes was being held in London, Bradshaw was busy competing at the Welsh Athletics Championships in Cardiff. And the athlete, who spent five years living and training in the Welsh capital, ensured she made it an occasion to remember by breaking her own Welsh all-comers record.

Newport County manager Mike Flynn remained upbeat despite his team suffering a first defeat of the season at Mansfield on Saturday. The men from Rodney Parade had started the 2020-21 campaign with back-to-back 1-0 away wins, but a third straight trip on the road proved a step too far. Mansfield goals came from George Maris and Ollie Clarke either side of a Newport equaliser from Robbie Willmott with all three strikes coming in the first half.

Tom Marshall won his 16th Welsh title across all running disciplines on Sunday in one of the closest races of his illustrious career. The Cardiff middle distance star has moved up to run 5,000m on the track this season after making his name primarily over 800 and 1500m. But he will seldom have been pushed closer than he was in the final few steps of the 12.5-lap race around the Cardiff International Sports Campus track.

By Paul Jones  Leandro Bacuna is delighted to see the Cardiff City fans back supporting their team and is hoping the Bluebirds can continue their unbeaten start to the season when they travel to Peterborough on Tuesday evening. “I don’t think playing without the fans is football,” explained Bacuna who arrived in South Wales from Reading in 2019. “It’s just a different vibe having the fans back, having the 12th man supporting you, it makes football.”

Swansea City new boy Flynn Downes reckons the pass masters will soon be back and it will be torture for the opposition. The club’s £1.5m signing from Ipswich believes new head coach Russell Martin can take the Swans back to the time when they used to kill teams through death by a thousand passes. It was only 609 passes in the 0-0 draw against Sheffield United on Saturday but Downes played for the Tractor Boys against Martin’s MK Dons last season and said: “It was the worst.

Matt Richards has swum his way to Olympic glory, Stephen Dodd proved king of the senior golfers, and Alex Griffiths helped Welsh Fire ignite in the women’s new Hundred cricket competition. The trio are underlining how elite Welsh sports stars are coming to the fore after negotiating the perils and obstacles of the pandemic. But away from the top level, what’s the situation at sport’s grass roots after almost 18 months of living under the cloud of Covid 19?

Trystan Bevan has become the first “insider” to back the radical plan to limit substitutions in rugby. Bevan – who is high performance co-ordinator at Cardiff Rugby – believes there must be a curb on the number of replacements allowed on the field to make the sport less dangerous. Four-time Lions head coach Sir Ian McGeechan was part of a group of former coaches and players to sign an open letter this week calling on World Rugby to change its rules.

Despite a goalless draw against Sheffield United, Swansea City head coach Russell Martin thought “there were a lot of positives to take” from his first home match in charge. The former MK Dons chief has clearly already implemented his passing style on his new players, yet said that his side, “lacked the fitness to do it for 90 minutes.” He admitted there had been disruption to his side’s pre-season.

Shot putter Adele Nicoll took her last chance to claim a Commonwealth Games qualifying standard on Saturday before turning her attention to her bobsleigh ambitions. The Birchfield Harrier had been knocking on the door of claiming the qualifying standard all season, but appeared to be running out of time when she took part in Saturday’s Welsh Athletics Championships in Cardiff. With bobsleigh World Cup trials on the horizon next month, Nicoll needed to nail the Commonwealth Games standard in Cardiff on Saturday.

A weekend at the Welsh Athletics Championships in Cardiff was just what the doctor ordered for Sarah Abrams. The Blackheath and Bromley athlete only started work as a newly qualified doctor on Wednesday and won the Welsh triple jump title on Saturday. Abrams, normally a long jumper, had opted for the triple jump due to a lack of training, having only finished her medical studies in the spring.

Mick McCarthy is going to enjoy his bully boy strike pair of Kieffer Moore and James Collins for however long they throw their weight around for Cardiff City. Bluebirds manager McCarthy praised Collins for “bullying” Blackpool’s defenders in his side’s 2-0 win at the newly-promoted club and said Moore had “put himself about” before clinching the win with the second goal. The twin-headed threat could be in jeopardy if Wales striker Moore is the subject of offers from other clubs in the remaining two weeks of the transfer window, but McCarthy insists he will not lose sleep over an outcome he cannot control.

An injury to Cardiff Demons and Wales captain Shaunni Davies on 75 minutes meant that it was a premature end to this hard-fought Betfred Women’s Super League South semi-final, with the result standing. Davies was injured in a legitimate tackle and unable to be moved, so there was no chance of restarting the game.

Joel Makin will go into next week’s British Open boosted by a runners-up spot at the Manchester Open. Wales’ world number 10 – who became the first player from Wales to triumph at the British Nationals two weeks ago – continued his rich vein of current form at the tournament but was edged out in the final by Peru’s Diego Elias. Makin said: “Overall I’ve had a great two weeks.

Lauren Price . . . she came, she saw, she conquered and now they have painted a telephone box gold in her honour. But what now for Wales’ Olympic boxing champion? Her national team coach with Wales, Colin Jones, tells Tom Prosser of his long-term faith in the fighter and why he believes Price will compete at both the next Commonwealth Games and Olympics. Lauren Price has achieved something no Welsh boxer has ever managed before, but the coach heading Wales’ Commonwealth Games squad in the sport is not surprised. Price has returned home to Ystrad Mynach to a hero’s welcome after becoming Olympic champion in Tokyo – something no Welsh boxer had previously done in history.

By Tom Prosser  Newport County AFC have bolstered their attacking options with the signing of experienced striker Alex Fisher ahead of their clash with Mansfield on Saturday afternoon.  Fisher becomes County’s 13th addition of the summer window and has put pen-to-paper on a contract that will see him remain at Rodney Parade until 2022.

Mick McCarthy has told his Cardiff City players their away form is critical to any hopes of a promotion push in the Championship this season The Bluebirds boss takes his side to Blackpool on Saturday in their first away trip of the campaign, having been held to a 1-1 draw with Barnsley last week. Last season, Cardiff managed to win 10 matches away from home and draw five – a return bettered only by Norwich City and Brentford, who both won promotion to the Premier League.

By Tom Prosser Joe Day is delighted to be back at Newport County and after making so many memories during his first spell at the club, he is now excited to create many more new ones with Michael Flynn’s men. The goalkeeper made nearly 250 appearances for Newport before joining Cardiff City two years ago. He found game-time hard to come by at Cardiff and was sent out on loan to both AFC Wimbledon and Bristol Rovers but he insists he returns to Rodney Parade as better goalkeeper.

The coach who denied Swansea City a place in the Premier League has an early chance to remind Swans fans what they are missing on Friday night. Brentford head coach Thomas Frank – who ended hopes of a Welsh club in the Premier League with a 2-0 victory for the Bees in the Wembley play-off final in May – is in the big time this evening with a home match against Arsenal. It will be a fixture the Swans could have savoured had things not gone so badly wrong for former head coach Steve Cooper and his team in what proved to be his last competitive fixture in charge.

By Rob Carbon  Glamorgan fell to a four run defeat in their final Royal London One-Day Cup clash with Yorkshire Vikings, but still managed to top Group B and bag a home semi-final on Monday.  They were able to stay on top of the table despite their loss thanks to a superior net run rate over the eight pool matches. Coach, David Harrison is delighted with his team’s form and doesn’t believe this defeat will dent his side’s confidence going into the knockout stage