GET to Featherstone early on Saturday for the National Conference League’s huge end-of-season special.
There should be a big crowd for what will be a massively entertaining double-header, and if there isn’t, there must surely be something amiss with Rugby League fans who, in that event, will be much less discerning than they often make out, especially as it’s just £5 admission, and £3 concessions.
Most attention will naturally be on the Grand Final, in which League Leaders’ Trophy winners Siddal take on West Hull.
That match kicks off at 2.30pm, although the action starts at 12.30pm, with the Division One Promotion Final between Ince Rose Bridge and Stanningley.
I’m not the biggest lover of play-offs, but I certainly have plenty of time for them when promotion is at stake, given teams currently in fine fettle find themselves elevated and should, you would think, carry that form into a higher tier.
Both games should be thrillers.
Siddal coach Gareth English insisted, quite rightly, that results earlier in the season will have no bearing on the outcome of the Grand Final, and the same stance will of course apply to the promotion decider.
Nevertheless, I’m going to pass on that information to readers for their own possible use. Siddal beat West Hull 32-16 in Halifax and Wests prevailed 12-10 on the east coast while Ince accounted for Stanningley 24-16 in Wigan and 26-23 in Leeds.
The festival at Fev isn’t, of course, the entire action in the NCL on Saturday.
Rovers could have been hosting a triple-header, but it was decided (by, I believe, the clubs themselves when the semi-finalists became known) to abide by the original plan of the highest-placed club having home advantage in the Division Two Promotion Play-off Final.
That outfit are Pilkington Recs, who entertain Hensingham, the sides having seen off Normanton and Clock Face respectively two days ago.
I’m sure the touchlines will be packed on Saturday for what will be another momentous clash.
Pilks toppled the Hens 26-16 in the league fixture at the same venue and also 26-16 in Cumbria. Won’t it be creepy if that’s yet again the result?
There will be high interest, too, in the opening games in the Pennine League’s winter campaign, which starts on the same day.
This is a fantastic time of the year to be playing Rugby League and I hope that feeling continues through to spring, given that last season, there were too many walkovers in the Pennine for anyone’s liking.
On that subject, it was disappointing to note when the North West Youth Under 18 results for Sunday, September 21 dropped in, that all eight fixtures were marked as 18-0, which usually means that one team has blobbed.
Three of the 13 Under 16 matches were also walkovers, and another was postponed, which is better than the Under 18s but, let’s face it, hardly inspiring.
Also attracting attention, in this case more positively, is the tour of the UK by the Wanderers, which I’m told is a squad of Australians, made up of boys, girls and women, who will be playing a fair number of games during October.
Details of fixtures, especially kick-off times, are a tad on the sketchy side but I’ve endeavoured to provide as much information as I can elsewhere in this issue.
Most importantly I hope that the tourists, who I think hail in the main from Queensland and New South Wales, enjoy themselves and will look back on their adventure, in coming years, with real fondness.
The Wales Wheelchair scene, incidentally, is certainly burgeoning and it was good to hear that the vibrant radio station Cymru Sport is to provide live reports on much of the action over the next few weeks. I hope that a similar feelgood factor can be resurrected in the men’s open age arena.
I touched, in last Monday’s issue, on a meeting arranged by the Rugby Football League aimed at restoring the health of the grassroots game in the north of England, and few, surely, would argue with the thrust of the RFL’s sentiments.
I stated, seven days ago, that I have little problem with more regionalised fare, but I have to admit that one stalwart has given me cause for more reflection.
That’s with the assertion that some of the teams who would not feature in what he insists is a planned twelve-team top tier in the National Conference League (possibly the only one of the four sections that would be left, although there was no mention of that by the RFL in its statement last Friday) could be far too strong for their regional league cousins, with potentially disastrous consequences for affected competitions.
Unfortunately I’ve heard nothing on any of this directly from the RFL so, in that sense, I’m working ‘blind’ and am unable to form a properly coherent view (nothing new there, some readers might say!).
Hopefully the grassroots will benefit, and prosper, from decisions finally made because it does seem that there’s plenty of scope for more discussion.
Finally, congratulations to the four teams who won the Yorkshire Men’s Leagues play-off finals on Saturday.
I’d have liked to have previewed these matches in last week’s issue but, sadly, the only information the RFL provided that they were taking place was in the fixtures issued by GameDay (although none of the matches were described as finals, the only clue came – yet again, we’ve been here before, haven’t we? – in the fact that the games had staggered kick-off times and were all at the Fox’s Biscuit (sic) Stadium, Batley).
Poor, poor, poor, and an issue the RFL should clearly address alongside seeking to restructure the grassroots. Teams and players deserve much better from the governing body.