Pontypridd take pride in their local heroes

Richard Parks offered a simple definition of the team spirit that has driven Ponty-pridd to this afternoon's Parker Pen Shield final. "A lot of the players are friends, outside of the game," said the open-side flanker. "When your arse is hanging out, or your back's against the wall, it's instinctive to help each other."

Nine of today's starting XV against Sale are locally-born, and if togetherness was defined by the Pontypool front row of the 1970s then Pontypridd are the modern equivalent. Let's call them the Viet Mid-Glamorgan.

To be strictly accurate, Parks, though born in Pontypridd, learned his rugby at Newport and Pontypool – the other end of the world to some of the more blinkered denizens of the Rhondda Valley. But when he returned to Sardis Road three years ago, it was to a club looking to its roots after an exodus of stars.

Some had slipped into retirement. Others – such as Neil Jenkins, Martyn Williams, Geraint Lewis and Dafydd James – followed the well-trodden path of Wales internationals down the ages who left Pontypridd for more fashionable clubs. Parks and the new generation, coached initially by Richie Collins and latterly by Lynn Howells, were forced to grow up together.

"It was sink or swim for us," said Parks, 24. "We've matured, physically and mentally, together. Our girlfriends meet during the week, and the guys eat at each other's houses. It's added to the close-knit nature of the team."

Next month, five of Pontypridd's pack, including Parks, are off to South Africa with Wales for Tests in Bloemfontein and Cape Town. All are uncapped. Two from Parks, No 8 Michael Owen and lock Robert Sidoli, 22, will be on the Wales bench alongside hooker Mefin Davies for Wednesday's match against the Barbarians.

Loose-head prop Gethin Jenkins, like Owen only 21 but perhaps the greatest prospect, is waiting his turn. Their selection is reward for an upward curve of a season that, after a series of narrow defeats early on, has seen 16 wins in 22 matches since December.

Along the way, Pontypridd bounced Saracens and London Irish out of the Shield and last week won the Principality Cup for only the second time by edging out Llanelli 20-17 at the Millennium Stadium. Now Sale stand in the way of qualification for the Heineken Cup, and an extra £120,000 in central funding from the Welsh Rugby Union.

The Ponty Five are due to join up with the Wales squad in the Vale of Glamorgan tonight, but not before returning to Sardis Road first to say thank you to some of the 5,000 fans who will have made the trip to Oxford. "With the shutdown of certain industries in the Rhondda, the area has been run-down for a decade or more," said Parks. "The rugby club provides a massive impetus to the whole community. To see the impact we have here is really humbling."

In the month that Rotherham fell foul of the Premiership élite, and Wasps moved further from their roots by taking the low road to High Wycombe, Pontypridd appear to have a place for everything, and everything in its place. "We've got a lot of old-fashioned values which, when the game went professional, other clubs lost," said Parks, whose distinctive dreadlocks scarcely mark him out as a stick-in-the-mud. "Go to Cardiff, and you get no sense that they have a rapport with their supporters. But we are moving forward together."

And there's the rub. Lewis is returning from Swansea (who will miss out on the Heineken Cup if Pontypridd make it) in the summer. Neil Jenkins, depending on how Cardiff view the year he has left on his contract, may be back too. Ponty's director of rugby Clive Jones, a Rhondda man himself, knows all about the club's "them and us" attitude, but wants the "us" part to be that bit bigger. A new Academy opens for business on 3 June, and Jones sees Pontypridd as the natural focus for the million-strong catchment area of the Seven Valleys.

Club commitments allowing, Parks has been rooming with Wales's captain, Colin Charvis. "He said 'you're here now, there's no point hanging around'," said Parks. "So I'm not going to South Africa to make up the numbers." The same applies to Ponty at the Kassam Stadium today.