HEARTY congratulations are due to East Leeds!

The men from Easy Road believe that they have set a new record for the National Conference League (and they may well be correct) by amassing more than 1,000 points in a single season. 

Easts actually hit that milestone – exactly – with the 62-16 Division Two victory over Barrow Island, and duly added to that tally with the 90-2 win over eleven-man visitors Hull Dockers on Saturday.

That latter triumph leaves chairman Jake Normington (who actually played his last game against Dockers) and his side reflecting on a 100 percent winning record, thus emulating their neighbours Hunslet Club Parkside, who won the Premier Division in, if memory serves 2018, without a defeat or draw. 

It’s quite an achievement and it’s good to see.

I retain vivid memories of how East Leeds struggled in terms of open-age results a decade or two ago although, as that great stalwart Malcolm Waite regularly reminded me when calling on Saturday evenings with details of yet another defeat, his club was paying the price for a vibrant youth and junior structure which quite a few professional outfits all too regularly tapped into.

East Leeds are now strong at, I believe, all levels and I’ll be featuring, and paying tribute to, what has long been a grand outfit over the next week or two.

Doffed hats, too, to Siddal, who are through to the NCL Grand Final on the first Saturday of October, at the Millennium Stadium, Featherstone.

The Halifax outfit are in the decider courtesy of a qualifying semi-final victory over West Bowling, although the Bradford team will have another chance (by dint of having finished second in the league) against West Hull, who scuttled Thatto Heath Crusaders in the weekend’s eliminator, in this Saturday’s second qualifying semi-final.

On a very wet day, both of the defeated sides – and two others in the ten-match programme – were nilled, and another three teams were pointless at half-time, with 0-0 scores being registered at the break at West Hull versus Thatto and, in Division One, Wigan St Patricks versus Stanningley. 

Meanwhile the promotion semi-finals take place this week in Divisions One and Two.

Leigh East, incidentally, have already worked wonders by securing elevation from the bottom tier and should join Keighley Albion and Saddleworth Rangers in Division Two next year (more on that later in this column, though) through hugely impressive play-off wins at Myton Warriors and Bentley after finishing fifth in the table.

While I’m not hugely in favour of teams winning championships through play-offs, given that everyone plays everyone else home and away throughout the campaign, I don’t have an issue with promotions being achieved via that route, on the basis that it’s reasonable to expect end-of-season form to be carried over into the next campaign.

We now have Ince Rose Bridge (who came third, behind to Heworth – congratulations to the Villagers in securing a place in the top flight, alongside champions Wigan St Judes, by the way) battling for the third promotion slot in Division One alongside Stanningley, Shaw Cross Sharks and Oldham St Annes.

Annes not only held off a challenge from Wigan St Patricks for sixth spot but rose to fifth, above Shaw Cross, through beating Judes, while the Sharks lost at Kells on the last day of the regular season.

Whoever goes up through the play-offs will certainly be battle-hardened!

The NCL’s big occasion at Saturday, October 4 at Featherstone Rovers will, incidentally, be a double-header and not, as was recently mooted, a triple-header.

Conference bosses have, I think after some discussion with the teams involved in the play-offs, opted to stage the Division Two promotion final at the home of the highest-placed of the two finalists, although on the same day.

The winter-based Pennine League, meanwhile, will start on that same busy afternoon, with 17 teams involved, just one of which (Rochdale’s Firgrove Falcons) hail from Lancashire.

I hope that a competition which was, half a century ago, arguably the most vibrant in the land, will prosper this winter although my understanding is that, following a meeting on Friday facilitated by the Rugby Football League, players whose summer-season commitments don’t end until November will not be allowed to play again until the following March.

Quite where that will leave anyone involved with the Pennine League, or indeed the Pennine League itself, remains to be seen.

A similar sentiment can be applied to those sides who have (or will) earn promotion (or suffer relegation) throughout the National Conference League as the feedback I’ve had from Friday’s confab is that the NCL will be regionalised from the 2026 season with twelve teams operating in the top flight and the remaining three sections merging with various regional leagues.

I’m told that a further meeting will be held this Wednesday. Much, obviously, has to be resolved but, according to my confidante, regionalisation will definitely happen.

I’ve written often enough in these pages in favour of more regionalised fare. On that basis I’ve no issue with what the RFL appears to be proposing – other than that it would be better left until 2027, as clubs should always know what they’re actually aiming for rather than, as it seems in this instance, having it thrust upon them at the eleventh hour.

If it’s true that the NCL is to be regionalised below the top tier from next spring then those players who are now preparing for promotion play-offs will surely ask themselves whether there’s any point.

But this is Rugby League, after all, and clubs at so-called higher levels are also having to deal with moving goalposts. Why should the grassroots be any different?

Finally, Peter Tyson has corrected the assertion made by me last week that Saturday’s match between Maryport and Seaton Rangers, which had been arranged to separate teams who had finished joint-top of the Holmen Iggesund Cumberland League’s Premier Division, was a first. 

He reminded me: “The same thing happened last year, when Wath Brow beat Maryport 24-12 at Seaton, as both teams finished on equal points.

“Also, though no play-off was involved, in 2022 Distington and Ellenborough finished equal at the top – Distington had to win at Lowca in their last game by more than 60 points, and duly did so, by 82-10, to take the title.”

In thanking me for publishing his thoughts on recognised first-teamers being allowed to turn out for second teams in line with the Rugby Football League’s operational rules (something that would never have been allowed, back in the day, in finals) he added (and I’ve cut out the names of the teams, as I don’t really want to single clubs out): “That was not the only instance of NCL teams abusing the rules by a long way.

“This week, **** used virtually their entire first team to face **** . This has to be totally dispiriting for the players on the wrong end of these results.”

I agree, wholeheartedly.