BEDWAS head to the Brewery Field in Bridgend tonight for the first of three crucial Principality Premiership battles on successive weekends.

Head coach Stefan Sankala’s charges face the Ravens (kick-off 7.15pm) before a home game against Neath and then a trip to Swansea.

The common link between those opponents is that they are all currently below 11th-placed Bedwas in the table.

Bridgend and Swansea sit just one point behind Bedwas, while Neath are five points adrift at the bottom.

Picking up points against sides around them will be crucial if Bedwas are to avoid the drop to the Championship at the end of the season.

There already appears to be a clear split in the standings with 14 points between RGC 1404 in ninth and Cross Keys in 10th.

“We’ve got an important few weeks coming up with three games against sides below us in the table,” said Sankala.

“We set ourselves a target over the previous four games and we achieved 50% of that.

“We’ve set a new challenge and goals for the next three weeks. These are massive points on offer because they could give us some breathing space.”

Assessing tonight’s opponents, he added: “We’ve studied Bridgend and they have been in games and not come out with the result.

“They’ve had a few big scores against them but a lot of games have been pretty close, not too dissimilar to us.

“They are a hard working and honest team who are good in the collision.”

Bedwas were up at 5am last Saturday as they made the long trek north to Colwyn Bay.

And while they may have lost 38-12 to RGC, Sankala was pleased with the effort of his players.

“It was a challenging journey, but the boys responded really well,” he said. “I don’t think the journey had too much of a bearing on the performance.

“They worked hard for 80 minutes and the score didn’t reflect the game.”