After a dream start to their National League division one campaign, Narberth have come back down to earth with a bump in recent weeks, with this 43 points to 13 defeat at the hands of title favourites Pontypool marking their fifth loss in six outings.
The Otters have had a bit of a wake up as to the testing times in the upper echelons in recent weeks, and it was no different at Pontypool Park, with Pooler running in three tries in the space of six minutes to effectively end the game as a contest.
Although they got off to a bright start, camped in Pooler's half for the first 10 minutes, the Otters were unable to turn pressure into points and ultimately suffered the consequences.
Simon Daniel missed with an early penalty for the visitors, but Byron Haywood made no mistake for the homesters at the other end in the 1lth minute, easily slotting over his first place kick of the game.
While Daniel levelled matters with a well-struck penalty on the half-hour, the former Merit Table giants were quick to display their championship credentials by exploiting Narberth's failure to effectively clear, although it was near the end of the half before they finally managed to breach the Otters' defences.
An attempted kick to touch by Otters' fullback Gareth James, who otherwise had an excellent all round game, fell to Pooler's Lennie Woodward on the halfway line.
The wily winger showed his class with a head down mazy run which wrong-footed the Narberth defence before he brushed off a final tackle to touch down.
Haywood added the extras, but Narberth had the last word before the break when Daniel reduced the deficit with a penalty.
The opening stages of the second half saw Pontypool step up a gear with three tries in quick succession.
The first came when wing Nathan Daniel made something out of nothing to make up for an earlier touchdown which was denied by the referee.
Haywood converted and then added the extras to two further tries, the first after scrum-half Kevin Ellis burrowed his way over from close range and the second when centre Jonathan Williams carved his way through some rather lacklustre defence.
Narberth refused to let their heads drop, with Alan Phillips, Simon Delaney and Andrew Howell grafting 110 per cent up front and half-back pairing of Daniel and Chris Macdonald varying their options, but unforced errors and slapdash handling compounded their woes and denied them chances to make effective inroads.
Another Ellis try midway through the second half, again converted by Haywood, saw Pooler widen the gap, before Ellis was again involved to send back row forward Richard Field over for another touchdown.
Although Pooler had effectively wrapped things up, Narberth refused to throw in the towel and grabbed a late try through the industry of Wayne Jones.
Intercepting, the wing made good ground, only to find his path blocked by former international centre John Devereux. However, he found his team-mates in close support, switching play to the other side to send wing Nick Jones over in the corner.
Daniel did well to add the conversion, but it was scant consolation for the large contingent of Otters fans who had made the trip east.
The Otters will be hoping to regroup and put their torrid time of recent weeks behind them tomorrow (Saturday) when they welcome Glamorgan Wanderers to the Lewis Lloyd ground.
Narberth fielded: Gareth James, Nick Jones, Elgan Vittle, Andrew Bowen, Wayne Jones, Simon Daniel, Chris Macdonald, Andrew Howell, Simon Delaney, Alan Phillips, Jamie Bohata, Emori Katalau, Simon Davies (capt.), Meurig Daniel, Gareth Bennett.