UNUSUALLY (this is Rugby League, after all) I was able to pen the following passage last Friday, a full eight days before the games to which I’m referring are due to take place.
That was because only one match (which had no bearing on league standings) was scheduled on the last day of the regular season in the National League’s Premier Division.
The road to Wakefield, and the National League’s inaugural Grand Final at the DIY Kitchens Stadium on Saturday, October 24, begins this Saturday.
The top two – League Leaders’ Trophy winners West Hull and runners-up Hunslet ARLFC – have byes at the opening stage.
Waterhead Warriors, who finished third, are at home to sixth-placed Wath Brow Hornets while Thatto Heath Crusaders entertain Siddal as the sides finishing fourth and fifth respectively.
West Hull will host the lowest-placed side of the two survivors in the semi-finals, on Saturday, October 17, and Hunslet ARLFC will be at home to the other team.
It’s a different matter in Division One, however, where much rested on the closing fixture in terms of who would finish in sixth place.
Egremont Rangers travelled to Wigan St Patricks aware that victory – or a draw – would hoist them above Stanningley (and Oulton) and, with that, seal a place in the promotion play-offs while Stanningley, who were the form team in the section with six successive wins behind them, could only watch on and hope for the best.
In the event Egremont edged a game which at one stage had looked in the bag and will now hope to work their way to the Grand Final, with a trip to East Leeds beckoning this Saturday.
In addition to the National League play-offs, the Conference play-offs series are about to reach a very important stage with Orrell St James, Blackbrook, Featherstone Lions and Ince Rose Bridge all set to battle for inclusion in Division One, at the expense of relegated Pilkington Recs and Oldham St Annes.
The four hopefuls will be doing battle at Victoria Park, Warrington, on Saturday, with noon and 3.00pm starts, as revealed elsewhere in these pages.
Meanwhile Pilkington Recs will host the inaugural Shield semi-finals in which Ashton Bears will take on Kippax Welfare at noon, with Milford and Myton Warriors squaring up three hours later.
Compelling stuff for sure while, in the sport’s birthplace, a huge game is in prospect at Lindley, where the Huddersfield and District League’s Holliday Cup final will involve Moldgreen and Newsome Panthers.
It’s the 141st final, league secretary Sue Taylor tells me, which means that it’s actually a decade or so older than the Northern Union itself.
As such (and that’s not even taking into account that any meeting of Newsome and Moldgreen has to be worth attending) it’s a compelling fixture.
Grassroots Rugby League fans really are spoilt for choice this weekend, and there’s plenty of action in London on Saturday, where Wests Warriors, who are based at Wasps RUFC, will, I believe, host what should be a pulsating clash between the South of England representative side and the Australia and New Zealand Exiles.
This is a game which could very well pit teammate against teammate and, for that and several other reasons (not least that the Exiles edged last year’s match), is too close to call.
Home coach Jamie Jones, of Oxford Cavaliers, will be keen to not only exact retribution for the 2025 reverse but build towards this month’s other fixtures, both of which are away, at Scotland Bravehearts and Wales Dragonhearts.
I reckon that most, maybe all, of the lads who are representing South of England would grace the England Community Lions team and I hope that the Lions selectors will be at Wasps to monitor the talent and, looking a few years down the line, make a note of the names of the players of the year and the nominees at last week’s London Junior League presentations.
The notion that ours is solely a northern sport is, frankly, rubbish, and it would be no surprise if some of those youngsters go on to follow in the footsteps of such as Mike McMeeken, to name just one present-day Super League star, within the next decade or so.
Also heartwarming is the fact that the Wales Wheelchair side have hit their target as the 2026 World Cup draws closer.
Wales recently issued a clarion call for funding after a sponsor had to pull out at the eleventh hour, leaving coach Alan Coran and his players facing a £10,000 funding challenge ahead of the competition, which is taking place later this month in Australia.
Wheelchair Rugby League is much more expensive to operate than any other of the sport’s formats, for a myriad of obvious reasons – not least transportation costs relating to players and, of course, equipment – but the sporting public has got behind the team.
“Send three-and-fourpence, we’re going to a dance!”
It was a misleading statement by our military, and possibly apocryphal (the radioed message was actually “send reinforcements, we’re going to advance”) and it now also feels apt in League Express.
I reported in last week’s issue (with, it has to be said, the caveat of “according to information received”) that the British Army hadn’t beaten the Royal Navy in the last match of the Military Inter-Services by enough points to knock the Royal Air Force off the top of the final table.
Maybe I was right to suggest doubts over details as it turns out that there was a goal missing in the Army’s total.
Sekove Sereki’s four-goal (not three, as initially reported) haul meant that the Army beat the Navy 38-26, not 36-26, and had therefore edged the RAF in the points difference stakes.
So the accolades should go to the Army rather than to the RAF who, through the Navy conceding those two extra points, closed in second place in the table rather than as champions (although the RAF, and of course the Navy, deserve high praise for their respective contributions to what was a hugely entertaining tournament).
And Sereki should take a bow for landing what was the vital conversion, from some 25 metres to the right of the posts and, I understand, in full awareness of the consequences of hitting (or of missing) the target.
Older watchers might have been reminded of Colin Tyrer, given the length of time he took over the procedure. Although, as so often with Tyrer, Sereki was unerringly accurate.
Finally, the BARLA National Cup final at the end of the month will involve Ince Rose Bridge, who won their semi-final at Leigh Miners Rangers on Friday to earn a date with West Hull.
The game, at the One Bore Stadium, Castleford, will follow the first-ever 1973 Cup Final in which Hunslet ARLFC, who won at Blackbrook on Saturday, will take on Fryston Warriors.
Congratulations to all four finalists. The event should be one to remember.
