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Forth Valley Vikings played our first league fixture yesterday losing 70-28 away to Strathmore Silverbacks. I wasn't there (unfortunately my season ended before it began with a broken wrist in training ) but apparently there were plenty of positives against good opposition. 5 tries scored shows we can cause problems with the ball. Defending in league is obviously very tough when you aren't used to getting back the 10 etc. It'll come though.

1st game against an established side, any result is a positive no matter the score, Plenty to review from and grow

[week or so late mode] ....Nights are gonna get darker earlier, gonna get colder too I reckon. Frost on the ground soon, leaves all over the place, weather getting worse....ish. never mind, it'll soon be Christmas [/week or so late mode]

June 26 Hull Bilton Bears 0 Hull Dockers A 80 It’s good to be watching up north again. There is just a difference in the nature of the game when played by those brought up on it. I was late in discovering the local league in Hull and have only seen a few at home with wonderful venues like the Graveyard and Orchard Park surrounded by flats and wish I had seen more the now not used pitches. The Hull and District League appears to have folded and the Yorkshire Men’s has had the sense to put most Hull teams together in Div 5 East. That may result in some mismatches but it is better than forcing teams at this level to travel to Halifax, Bradford etc. Bilton went into the game with a nil five win lose ratio and with a heavy home defeat in one of the division 5 could be argued to be the worst rated league side. They are however categorically not and would have competed and probably won against a couple I have watched this year. They also managed to get an A team out earlier in the day and look a good club all round apart from results. I last saw Bilton at Eastmount, a large open space with sometimes more than one game at once, but they have back to the village this season but apart from the fact this is East Yorks not Hull nothing looked different and the village can only be described as very dull. The ground is behind the village hall and was roped in each side. I have seen clubs share with football, union, cricket, cycling and probably other sports but behind the posts is the venue for axe, knife and tomahawk throwing. Thankfully they were not using the venue today and the pitches do not overlap. Dockers were simply stronger especially a tall number 10 who could run through the Bilton defenders with relative ease and scoped a few tries. One disadvantage of groundhopping is you fail to recognise players. He would have shared man of the match with the referee, I am told only 18 and able to be almost invisible as the best refs are. Clearly a one sided game with Bolton down to 10 at the end but they did no works with 10 than 13 and are a much better side than the result suggests

At 21 minutes and 21 seconds past 9 tonight, it will be the 21st second of the 21st minute of the 21st hour of the 21st day of the 21st week of the 21st year of the 21st century ( assuming we are using the Gregorian calendar)

From a non-heartlands perspective, it's likely to be a travel issue. If you can run a tag league in one location and get 4 or 5 teams there, you have a competition with zero travel. If you just added a tag team to each community club, you would have some clubs with loads of travel. I've been a big believer in social formats of the game - not necessarily to recruit players, but as a way of engaging club members and finding volunteers etc. I think the model of a community club hosting a tag league is a really good one - not that the players represent your club, but that the club is the home base for them.

i blame. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Thaler.