President's Welcome 2018/19 5 of 14

5. Dinnington RUFC - 12th January 2019


A Happy New Year and welcome to Sandhill Lane for the first home fixture following the Christmas break. Our visitors this afternoon are Dinnington and on behalf of all our members I would like to wish them a very pleasant afternoon and hope that the game shows everything that is so good about Rugby Football.

Dinnington will be well happy with the start they have made to 2019, having recorded a home victory against early pace setters Middlesbrough, a win that made little difference to their League position but did a great deal to edge them closer towards safety from relegation.

For our youngsters to travel to Bradford Salem and score 6 tries as they did last week shows tremendous spirit and potential and it will not happen very often that a side scores so many points and ends up slipping down the League by 2 places! Anybody who has followed Yorkshire 1 Rugby for any length of time will recognise it as another demonstration of how competitive the League is and just how high the standard of Rugby can be!

Whether the League will have the same look next season as it currently does is still a matter of some conjecture, as Clubs from across the North of England meet with officials from the RFU to air their opinions on the composition and structure of future competitions. With sides struggling to fulfil away games on too many occasions when the fixture means a trip more than half an hour away, the Northern Division has been tasked with again looking at how to make League Rugby accessible and feasible to the majority of Clubs and teams. The next meeting for Clubs in our area takes place next Tuesday at West Park Leeds, and I will definitely be in attendance with Steve Cruise to try to make sure that views of our players and members are represented.

Last weekend again showed the strength of our Senior section when we again turned out 4 sides and recorded wins at second team level against Huddersfield YMCA (whose first XV play a League above) by 46-15 and the thirds and fourths both claimed the bragging rights against our local rivals York, the thirds holding on for a 34-31 win and the fourths registering a 15-12 victory at York. Congratulations to all teams and players on a fantastic weekend, let’s just hope we can build some momentum and carry it forward through the rest of the season!!