Port Talbot’s troubled steelworks will serve as an unlikely backdrop to a story of rugby league success against the odds on Sunday when Aberavon Fighting Irish return to the Challenge Cup for the first time in over two decades.
Few members of Aberavon’s part-time squad have been left unaffected by the shutdown of the plant’s blast furnaces in September, with the loss of nearly 3,000 jobs as well as immeasurable repercussions in the South Wales town.
